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LAKE AND FOREST 

AS I HAVE KNOWN THEM 



Eo mg ffiueste 



WHOSE YEARLY COMING IS AWAITED WITH PLEASURE 

AND WHOSE GENIAL PRESENCE GIVES ADDED 

DELIGHT TO OUR WOODS AND WATERS 

IS GRATEFULLY DEDICATED 
BY THE AUTHOR 



LAKE AND FOREST 



AS I HAVE KNOWN THEM 



BY 



CAPTAIN F. C. BARKER 



ILLUSTRATED FROM PHOTOGRAPHS 



AUTHOR'S EDITION 










BOSTON 

LEE AND SHEPARD 

1903 



^F~l 



THE LIBRARY 

CONGRESS, j 

Two Copies Receive*'. ' 

JUL 2 1903 j 

Copyiight Entry | 
CLASS- a- XXc No. 

COPY a, I 



SK33 

-3 V;> 



Copyright, 1903, by F. C. Barker. 
Published May, 1903. 



All rights reserved. 



Lake and Forest. 






NortoootJ i3w38 

J. S. Cashing & Co. — Berwick & Smith Co. 
Norwood, Mass., U.S.A. 



CONTENTS 



I. A Country Boyhood 

II. Camping Out .... 

III. The Indian Chief Metalluk 

IV. First Experience in Logging 
V. River Driving 

VL On A Different Tack . 

VII. Back to the Woods 

VIII. On the Magalloway Drive 

IX. Guiding Days 

X. Camp Bemis and The Birches 

XI. The Barker .... 

XII. Anecdotes of my Guests 

XIII. Experiences on the Ice 

XIV. Various Trips 

XV. Camp Life as it was 

XVI. Conclusion .... 



9 
26 

44 

51 
66 
98 

106 

115 
128 

138 
144 

147 

155 

175 
198 

211 



Some Old-time Lumbermen's Songs 



217 



ILLUSTRATIONS 

Captain F. C. Barker Frontispiece 

FACING PAGE 

The Birches i6 

A Bit of Scenery at The Birches 32 

My First Steamer, the Oquossoc — A Winter Hunt . 48 

Camp Caribou at Parmachenee Lake .... 66 

The Cookee ......... 80 

The Oozalliic—T\i^ Win. P. Frye .... 98 

Getting Supper 114 

F. C. Barker and John Danforth. Taken in Quebec in 
iSyi, after a trip through the woods from the 

Rangeley Lakes 128 

Camp Bemis 138 

The Barker . . 144 

Miss Florence E. Barker and her Namesake . .148 

Camp Parkman at Bemis — Interior of Camp Parkman . 160 

A Camp Interior 176 

The Ruins of our Old Hunting Camp — John Danforth 
and Two of his Guides at Camp Parmachenee on 

Cupsuptic River 198 

Miss Florence and John 216 

7 



LAKE AND FOREST 



CHAPTER I 

A COUNTRY BOYHOOD 

SACCARAPPA, the village in the town of 
Westbrook, Maine, was my birthplace, and 
where I spent the first six years of my life. 
At the end of that time, it was thought best for 
me to go to Andover to live with my uncle and 
aunt, who had taken my sister, three years older 
than myself, soon after my mother's death, which 
occurred before I was a year old. My sister, a 
year and a half older than I, was taken by my 
mother's niece, and still lived in Saccarappa. 
My father, who was an overseer in a cotton mill 
in the place, gave up keeping house at this 
time. 

My remembrance of being a Saccarappa boy 
is rather vague, although there are many things 
that I well remember; standing up in the ckss 
in school, and shouting that I lived in the County 

9 



10 LAKE AND FOREST 

of Cumberland, Town of Westbrook, and State 
of Maine, with emphasis, is still in my memory. 
And the song of ''The Old Horse": — 

" I have carted dirt for many a year 
From Saccarap to Portland pier, 
And now, from age and sore abuse, 
I am salted down for sailor's use." 

And also : — 

" You would scarce expect one of my age 
To speak in public on the stage, 
And if I chance to fall below 
Demosthenes or Cicero, 
Don't view me with a ' cricket's ' eye. 
But pass my imperfections by. 

" Large streams from little fountains flow, 
Tall oaks from little acorns grow, 
And though I am but small and young. 
Of judgment weak and feeble tongue. 
Yet all great learned men, like me. 
Once learned to read their ABC. 

" And why may not Columbia's soil, 
Rear men as great as Britain's isle? 
Exceed what Greece and Rome have done. 
Or any land beneath the sun? 
Let Massachusetts boast as great 
As any other sister state. 



A COUNTRY BOYHOOD n 

" And where 's the boy but three feet high, 
That's made improvement more than I? 
These thoughts inspire the youthful mind 
To be the greatest of mankind, 
Great, not Hke Caesar, stained with blood. 
But only great as I am good." 

It was twenty years after leaving Saccarappa 
before I returned to it, and at that time my 
sister and I passed a pleasant afternoon looking 
over the old house where we were born and 
played in childhood. All had a familiar look, 
but not as my childhood eyes saw them ; for the 
rooms in the house were much smaller than I 
remembered them, and the trees outside, and 
rocks that I remembered as being quite a distance 
from the house, I found very near. In calling 
on some of the people that we had remembered 
in childhood, and on telling them who we were, 
one old lady said to me, " La, I never should 
have known you," adding in the same breath, 
**You were an awful pretty baby." 

My life in Andover, on an upland, rocky farm, 
was a very pleasant one ; for, although I had no 
special liking for picking rocks in a stubble field, 
or pulling potato tops when white with frost, I 



12 LAKE AND FOREST 

soon developed a great love for the woods and 
brooks, and the inhabitants of them early began 
to absorb my whole attention. My Grandfather 
Merrill, whose father was the first settler of the 
town, was then well along in the eighties, but 
very smart for his years ; and I remember my 
first summer in Andover, and the good times my 
cousin Frank and I had when the haying at the 
meadow was going on. This was about three 
miles from our house, and in a woodsy, wild 
place, with a nice brook winding through it. 
Grandfather was too old, and Frank and I were 
too young, to take an active part in the work, 
and after the spreading was done early in the 
day, we put in most of our time fishing in the 
brook, and listening to grandfather's stories of 
Indians and animals, their neighbors and com- 
panions of early years. And how Frank and I 
enjoyed lying on the new-mown hay, while grand- 
father would sit on the ground, with his back 
resting against the stump of a tree, and tell his 
stories that were so fascinating to us ! 

The outdoor dinners were also very enjoyable, 
and I can remember yet how good they tasted, 
when the tin pail and fry-pan were worked 



A COUNTRY BOYHOOD 13 

over the open fire. Usually the fry-pan was 
well supplied with trout that Frank and I 
had caught from the brook, under the direction 
of grandfather ; and now I can close my eyes 
and almost see trout sailing over the alder bushes, 
as they often used to do in response to our 
yank, we running through the alders with bare 
feet and legs, which we scratched till they were 
bleeding, listening for the sound of the fish as 
he threw himself in the air, and struck the ground 
again in his death struggles. And I well remem- 
ber one unlucky day, when hurrying around a 
bunch of alders for a coveted trout, running 
" whack " into the business end of a hornet, 
which performed a surgical operation on my 
upper lip, while legs and hands and straw hat 
flew. But the fish would usually land in the fry- 
pan in the wind-up, where, with salt pork, they 
fried to a crisp ; and with potato, which was 
mashed with salt and cream by my good aunt 
at home and pressed down into a tin pan, and 
a nice piece of crusty corn bread, made a meal 
that tasted far better to me than anything eaten 
in the house. 

I remember one day Frank's dog. Rover, treed 



14 LAKE AND FOREST 

a bob cat on the meadow, and then there was 
excitement among both men and boys ; but the 
game was of the kind that boys could not take 
much hand in securing. The men armed them- 
selves with stout sticks, and the tree was felled, 
while they stood ready for battle about where 
the cat would strike. Between Rover, and the 
cat, and the men, there was a lively time ; and, 
while the cat did not escape with its life, Rover 
received some severe scratches from the cat, and 
whacks and thumps from the sticks. 

All this tended to kindle the fires that were 
in me for hunting and woods life, which my 
people, a few years later, as it developed, tried 
so hard to discourage, by pointing out the men 
in the neighborhood who had followed this life, 
telling me that I would be like them and bring 
up on the poor farm in the end. The first 
money that I remember making myself, I re- 
ceived for the skin of a black woodchuck, which I 
myself trapped and skinned. It was a large skin 
and covered quite a piece of the barn door when 
stretched and held in place with nails, but not 
larger to me than the two old-fashioned three-cent 
pieces which I received after I had carried it 
:three miles to the tanner. 



A COUNTRY BOYHOOD 15 

My uncle's farm was a considerable way from 
neighbors, and the woods extended for miles to 
the mountains. There were no pasture fences, 
and the cattle roamed where they would, in dry 
weather making long trips into the woods, where 
there were abandoned clearings and brook mead- 
ows ; and a good part of my duties was the getting 
of the cows. I used to start away early in the 
afternoon and often not return till late at night, 
and on the late trips would generally meet my 
uncle at a greater or less distance from the house, 
having grown uneasy at my being out in the 
woods in the darkness. I had a regular course to 
pursue. First I would go on to the "pinnacle," 
three-quarters of a mile from the house, and listen 
for the bell; and not hearing it would strike for 
the "Benjamin Poor opening," which was well 
grown up with bushes, half a mile below, on the 
banks of the Rapids, the name we had for the 
east branch of the Ellis River. Not finding 
them there, I would cross the river and strike 
for " Uncle John's opening," a half-mile farther 
on. 

No matter how much I might be in a hurry, I 
hardly ever let the opportunity pass for a little 



l6 LAKE AND FOREST 

swim when crossing the Rapids. It was but the 
work of half a minute to sHp off my short drilling 
pants and shirt, — I wasn't bothered with shoes 
and stockings, — and although there was a chance 
to jump from rock to rock, and not wet my feet, I 
generally preferred the pool, where the water was 
nearly to my neck. After my swim I would carry 
my clothes to the other side and dress there, and, 
after arraying myself in my scanty wardrobe, I 
would run for rods, jumping on one foot and then 
the other, canting my head and giving it a quick 
jerk, to throw the water out of my ears, and to 
get warm. 

In this pool I learned to swim, on my solitary 
trips. The first lesson I gave myself was by lay- 
ing my right arm over a perpendicular rock, 
where the water was well up to my shoulders, 
holding my feet from the bottom by bracing my 
other hand beneath myself on the rock, and try- 
ing to work my legs, bullfrog fashion. In this I 
succeeded fairly well, but when I came to strike 
out, the fear that my head would go under water, 
and my inability to work my hands and feet at the 
same time, caused me to get my feet on the 
bottom as quickly as possible. Then it came to 




05 

a 

o 

33 



A COUNTRY BOYHOOD 17 

me that I must get over this fear, and that I must 
find out if the water would really hurt me. I 
began by laying my face very gently on the water, 
and holding my breath ; then, as I got used to it, 
letting my head sink, and on opening my eyes 
under water was surprised to find how plainly I 
could see, and that it was not an unpleasant sen- 
sation. As my head went down, my feet wanted 
to come up, and it came to me that in trying 
to learn to swim it would be easiest to try it 
under water first. Accordingly, I straightened 
out, gave a little plunge in the water, putting my 
head below the surface, and tried to swim ; and 
although my hands and feet were going, one at a 
time, after the fashion of the Irishman's rowing, 
"Pull, Patsy, I pulled last," I found that I kept 
near the surface. In a very short time I got 
my hands and feet educated to pull together, and 
tried it with my head out of water, and was sur- 
prised to find that swimming was as easy as " roll- 
ing off a log," and that the secret of learning to 
swim was in overcoming the fear of one's head 
going under water. 

I often saw partridges and ducks on my trips 
after the cows, but as I was thought to be too 



1 8 LAKE AND FOREST 

young to be trusted with a gun, I would feast my 
eyes and long for the time when I should be 
allowed to carry one, and try to satisfy myself by 
pointing a stick at them and crying "bang." I 
soon had a bow and arrow almost always on hand, 
the arrow pointed by a board nail filed to a point; 
and many a squirrel, and occasionally a partridge, 
came to grief through my William Tell ability. 
My left knee still has three good scars, souvenirs 
of my early efforts in shaving out bows from 
hemlock limbs, interest getting away with caution 
in handling the draw-shave. 

When the fall rains came it was easier work to 
find the cows, and they were usually in their yard 
near the house in good season. In the frosty fall 
mornings, before the sun had fairly shown his 
face, I would trudge out to the yard, a milk pail 
on each arm, my hands stuck well down into my 
pockets, and pat the cows very gently to make 
them get up without moving from the bed, giving 
me a warm place for my bare feet while milking 
them. 

As the fall advanced, I used to set a few steel 
traps, that I borrowed, along the banks of the 
brook for muskrat, now and then being rewarded 



A COUNTRY BOYHOOD 19 

by getting one in my trap, and made wooden 
deadfalls for mink. In one of these I once 
caught a large, nice mink, for whose skin I 
received seven dollars. My first deadfall was a 
wonder in trap construction, and would have 
driven the ordinary mink out of the country at 
first sight; but a foolish one came along, and 
managed to choke himself to death in it. Possibly 
he had had a suicidal intent for some time, and 
availed himself of the first opportunity ; but he 
could not have made away with himself when his 
pretty, glossy skin would have looked better, or 
been more appreciated, than it was by the small 
boy who found him in his trap. I do not remem- 
ber that I keeled over, but I do remember that I 
rolled over several times, smoothing his slick fur 
from his nose to the tip of his tail ; and a better- 
feeling boy than I was, on the way home, could 
not have been found in that part of the world. 

Although during the days of the school term 
I was in the schoolroom in body, it was very hard 
to keep my mind there, for it found more pleasure 
in wandering among the birds and animals than 
among the sums and speUing lessons, and I took 
more interest in figuring out how to make a trap 



20 LAKE AND FOREST 

to catch a mink than in doing the examples in 
arithmetic. I would try hard to keep my mind 
on my lessons, but would hardly get settled down 
before an imaginary squirrel would run across 
the book, or a woodchuck whistle from some dis- 
tant rock pile or stone wall on the farm. And 
many of these piles of rocks and pieces of wall 
have suffered in my desperate attempts to get 
the withe, which I would twist and then double 
in a loop, where the woodchuck would bite at it, 
when I would unceremoniously yank him from 
his stronghold, by hooking the loop on his upper 
front teeth, and finish him with a few raps over 
the head with a stick, or my dog would shake his 
life out by the nape of the neck. Cruel as it may 
seem to some of my readers, it was in me, and 
the cruel part never entered my mind. 

Many were the scoldings I received from my 
indulgent uncle, and although he often threatened 
to cut and use a bigger withe on me than I used 
on the unfortunate 'chuck, and which I so richly 
deserved, yet I always got off by promising not 
to do it again, and not to ask to go fishing the 
next rainy day, but put the stones back in their 
proper places, which promise I faithfully kept 



A COUNTRY BOYHOOD 21 

until I chased another woodchuck into about the 
same place, when the promise would be forgotten, 
and again the stones would fly, regardless of mow- 
ing field or waving grain. 

Although I was not allowed to own a gun, 
yet I had a constant longing for the possession 
of one ; and there were usually some good fellows, 
larger boys or men, who would loan me one, 
which when not in use found a secret resting- 
place under the barn. When in use, I was 
very particular that my good uncle or aunt did 
not look that way ; and many were the wily 
pigeons which fell from the limbs of the tall 
dry trees on the " parsonage " blueberry grounds, 
overlooking the fields of India wheat. 

In these early years my boating propensities 
were being developed, for second in my mind to 
gun and trap was a boat, and every frog pond 
in the vicinity early had a more or less preten- 
tious raft ; and hidden in the alders by the river 
was a contrivance which I was pleased to call 
a boat, which I had made from boards picked up 
from neighboring fences, with a couple of horse- 
shoes nailed on the sides for rowlocks, and with 
oars and paddles hewn from boards. Many were 



22 LAKE AND FOREST 

the wild rides I had down the swollen waters of 
the Rapids, when the stream was filled to the 
banks by a heavy rain, dodging the numerous 
rocks and leaning trees, until they proved too 
much for me ; and I would find the boat overturn- 
ing, or canting up on a rock with the current 
boiling over it, and would finish my voyage by 
" finning it " for the nearest shore where the cur- 
rent would let me land. After a few days, when 
the water got back to its original depth, I would 
wade my boat back over rocks and sand-bars to 
the starting-point, hiding it in the bushes, await- 
ing another rise of water. As I think of it now, 
I wonder how I always succeeded in making a 
landing ; but I did, with nothing more than a good 
drenching, though when I started down the 
Rapids I generally finished my run with that. 

About this time a young white man and a 
squaw came up the ElUs River in a birch bark 
canoe, and pitched their tent on an intervale, 
about half a mile from my uncle's farm. I was 
among their early visitors, attracted there by the 
tent ; and expressing my strong desire to go out 
in the canoe, the young man at once took me 
out and showed me how to use the paddle, and 



A COUNTRY BOYHOOD 23 

after that he would let me go out with the canoe 
alone, which pleased me very much. At times 
I would spend whole half days practising with 
this, poHng up the stream, taking advantage of 
the eddies formed by the large rocks, shooting 
across currents and catching other eddies made 
by other rocks, then changing to the paddle, let 
the canoe shoot down the stream, keeping clear 
of the rocks, getting ideas all the time how the 
current set around the rocks. I thought his must 
be a very happy life, and very much envied him 
his tent, his canoe, his gun, and his dog ; but I do 
not remember that I thought the tawny squaw 
added anything to the outfit. 

This young man had a pretty story to tell of 
living with the Indians from his babyhood, hav- 
ing been stolen from his parents by a white man 
and given to them. This squaw, in particular, 
had always been very kind to him, and so he 
had married her, though she was ten or more 
years older than he. His story was not at all 
improbable, for when I was a boy the story 
was current around Andover of a man by the 
name of Robbins, who lived about the lakes, 
and who was a ** tartar." One of his many 



24 LAKE AND FOREST 

very bad deeds was to steal a boy in one of 
the backwoods settlements, and take him away 
into the woods with him. On being asked what 
he did with him, his answer was that he ''made 
very good sable bait ; " but years after the boy 
was found among some Indians to whom he had 
been given, and he had grown up with them and 
become very much attached to them. 

Either for this, or for some other of his 
wicked deeds, a warrant was issued for this 
Robbins, and two of the best men that could 
be found anywhere in the country were depu- 
tized to bring him to justice. They followed 
him up the Magalloway, to the carry that leads 
across to Parmachenee Lake. They found that 
he had taken his canoe, and carried it across, 
but would probably return, as his pack was hidden 
in the bushes. They hid in a thicket close by 
the trail, and soon heard him coming. When 
he got opposite, one of the men, Loomis, who 
was a very powerful man, jumped on him and 
pinned his arms to his sides, while the other man 
came quickly to Loomis's assistance. Together 
they took away Robbins's weapons and bound 
him, and soon had him in a canoe, and paddled 



A COUNTRY BOYHOOD 25 

him back to Magalloway settlement, which place 
they reached with their prisoner. They soon 
started with him for Paris jail, bound securely 
on the back of a horse, and about every man 
in the settlement went with them, to see him 
safely in jail; but he made his escape by dig- 
ging out before the day of the trial. 



CHAPTER II 

CAMPING OUT 

MY father, who followed his factory life 
for some years, during the summer 
time often used to visit my uncle's 
farm to see my sister and myself, and would 
encourage me to work on the farm and study 
my lessons, which promise I would make, and 
usually forget. Both he and my good uncle and 
aunt were firmly of the opinion that, unless I 
got over my fondness for the woods and at- 
tended to the farm, my life would be a failure. 
But as I grew older my love for the woods 
and waters only strengthened, and in my mind 
I was constantly planning a home in the woods ; 
and any one who could tell me about the woods 
and great lakes above Andover was my most- 
sought-after friend. 

In my uncle's sitting room was a large map 
of the state of Maine, published in 1862, giving 

26 



CAMPING OUT 27 

the lakes and rivers, and with little dots denoting 
houses, showing the settlements. This was my 
constant study, and I took greater interest in 
this than in any school books ; and always when 
I could get a chance, when my uncle and aunt 
were absent, I would find myself studying over 
the lakes and rivers of the map. Much to my 
gratification I was allowed to sleep on a lounge 
which rested against the wall beneath the map ; 
and many a night have I gone to sleep thinking 
of the home I would have on some of the lakes, 
and as soon as daylight came, would stand on the 
lounge, and hunt over the different lakes of the 
^tate. 

Chamberlain Lake was where I decided to set- 
tle, as there were more ponds and streams in 
that vicinity and fewer settlements, according to 
the dots on the map. I had my route planned 
out, and, as I remember it, I was going without 
asking permission. But to get there, I realized 
that it was quite a distance, through woods and 
across waters, and that I should need something 
of an outfit. It was not very elaborate as I had 
planned it, for all I wanted was a rubber and a 
woollen blanket, a gun, an axe, a two-inch auger, 



28 LAKE AND FOREST 

and a fry-pan. Besides this I would take a 
little pork, flour, and salt, a liberal supply of 
matches, and this, with what my gun and fish- 
hook would bring me, I thought would be all I 
needed. 

My route that I had planned was to take the 
old lake road from Andover to the arm of the 
Richardson Lake, twelve miles distant. Here I 
planned to build a water craft, what might now 
be called a catamaran. I had it in mind to cut 
two good-sized cedar logs, about twelve feet long, 
hew the bark from them nicely to make them 
run smoothly through the water, and point the 
ends. Then with my auger I would bore them 
at each end, and pin pieces across to hold them 
about five feet apart. These, with two more 
across at about equal distances, one in the right 
place to brace my feet against while rowing, I 
thought would make it strong enough to stand 
whatever waves I might meet. Then I was to 
bore two holes in each log, about twelve inches 
apart, in which I would put small crotches to 
make uprights for a seat about twelve inches 
above the crosspieces. Then I was to bore 
holes in each log about the right distance from 



CAMPING OUT 29 

the seat to hold rowlock standards, which I 
would hew out of green hard wood, bracing them 
by notching in the log, and upright near the top ; 
and the oars I would hew from a straight rift 
spruce, that I would split in the middle, hewing 
down the opposite side. 

I planned that I could get to the settlement at 
Rangeley with this outfit, by knocking it apart 
and carrying it in pieces across the carries be- 
tween the lakes. By this time I thought I should 
have to stock up with provisions, and thought 
that I could earn enough money for this by 
working among the farmers. Another resource 
that I had was a square pasteboard box, con- 
taining a dozen paper collars, for which my 
father had paid seventeen cents, and made me 
a present of on one of his visits to Andover. 
But, instead of indulging myself in the extrava- 
gance of spoiling a paper collar, I kept them 
carefully concealed with the rest of the outfit I 
was getting together, thinking that I could take 
them to Rangeley, where, undoubtedly, they 
would **take great" with the natives, and I could 
probably get as much as five cents apiece for 
them. 



30 LAKE AND FOREST 

After spending a few days in Rangeley, dis- 
posing of my stock of paper collars, and re- 
plenishing my larder with a little more flour and 
pork, I would shoulder my pack and strike 
through the woods for the nearest water, which 
was Dead River, as I learned by the map. This 
I expected to follow down until I came to 
navigable water, when I would build another 
catamaran ; and I traced out the course, down 
the Dead River and up the Kennebec, to Moose- 
head Lake. Just how I was to make my way 
across this big body of water, I was a little 
uncertain, but I was willing to trust to luck and 
not cross it till I came to it, feeling sure that 
I should reach my coveted stamping-ground. 
Chamberlain Lake. 

Although I spent many hours in planning my 

» route, and got the various articles of my outfit 

nearly all together, yet my much-planned trip 

fell through, like many other air castles I have 

built. ' 

When I was twelve or fourteen years old, my 
uncle decided to shingle his buildings, and ac- 
cordingly a shingle weaver had to be employed 
to make the shingles, who happened to be a 



CAMPING OUT 



31 



man well along in years, who had spent much 
of his life in fishing, hunting, and trapping about 
Andover and the lakes. Although he had not 
accumulated more than a living, he had more 
or less woodcraft, and a vast amount of hunting 
and fishing stories. In me he found a willing 
listener, and as I was his helper in getting out 
shingles, most of my entire summer was spent 
with him. It was my part to help saw off the 
cedar blocks for the shingles, and rive and split 
out the shingles with a mallet and a big iron 
froe, and Uncle Asa did the shaving. 

Uncle Asa was a great believer in scent as 
well as bait for his traps, and he was generous 
enough to impart his knowledge of some of these 
to me, although some of them had been sold 
as high as fifty dollars, he said, and I had lost 
no time in following out his instructions ; for 
in an earthen pot in a hole in the ground, not 
far from where we were working, was a combina- 
tion of muskrat, house cat, woodchuck, and skunk, 
chopped together. Here it was slowly working 
itself into condition, which would take five or 
six weeks, before it would be " ripe," allowed 
Uncle Asa, when it would toll a fox for a mile 



32 LAKE AND FOREST 

if the wind was right. And in a sunny place, 
suspended by a string from the limb of a tree, 
was a loosely corked bottle, containing chub, 
sucker, and trout. This was also to remain five 
or six weeks, "And then," said Uncle Asa, "put 
a little on your bait, and every mink in the country 
will have his nose in the air." 

One day, as we were pulling on the saw. Uncle 
Asa said to me, " There's one o' them city fellers 
that's boardin' over t' the tavern, and he's goin' 
down t' the brook after some o' your trouts, and, 
by cod, ef he don't tack ship, he'll run right 
straddle o' your fox bait." 

We kept an eye on him, and, sure enough, he 
did not change his course, but kept on in the 
direction of the fox bait, when all at once he 
stopped short, clapped his hand to his nose, 
swung himself half around, and took some long 
steps at right angles, which brought him toward 
us. On seeing us he sang out, " Something dead 
down therein the lower end of your pasture." 

"Guess not," said Uncle Asa, keeping on sawing. 

" But I tell you there is. I got a whiff of 
something a little the loudest of anything I ever 
struck in the smelling line," said he. 




A Bit of Scenery at the Birches 



CAMPING OUT 33 

" Tarnal woodchuck crawled in the wall and 
died," suggested Uncle Asa. 

" Nonsense, man, all the woodchucks in Chris- 
tendom couldn't get up such a smell as that ; " 
and he kept on his way, while Uncle Asa's soft, 
musical " cluck, cluck, cluck," was heard, and the 
small boy on the other end of the saw, with a 
very red face, was nearly bursting. 

How Uncle Asa's stories helped to pass the 
time away, and make me forget the aches in 
my young back, while hooked over that old cross- 
cut saw ! Uncle Asa, on the other end, con- 
stantly spun his yarns of fishing trips at the lakes, 
and running '* sable lines " over the mountains 
with Elmore Scribner or Mark Porter; how the 
bears hollered and the "Injun devil" yelled 
up under Bald Pate, or on the back side of Old 
Lone Mountain, at the sight of their camp-fire. 

Uncle Asa was a firm believer in the " Injun 
devil." As he put it, ''The critter didn't stay 
there all the time, but come 'round once in a 
while. Steve Morse saw him at C Pond medder. 
He had his old six-shooter with him, with three 
barrels loaded, and he didn't want any part of 
him ; " and ** Elmore Scribner and Mark Porter 



34 LAKE AND FOREST 

were runnin' a ' sable line ' up on Old Goose- 
Eye, when he give a screech in a tree almost 
over their heads, and they threw away all their 
traps and axe, and come a-tearin* down the moun- 
tain as though the devil had kicked 'em in end." 

Although he was Uncle Asa to me, and a hero, 
he was generally spoken of as " Old Fox," and I 
fear in these days might be called a poacher. 
But in those days most of the old-time hunters 
were like him, and considered the tenth day of 
October the right time to go on a fishing trip to 
be **real sartin " of a good catch, and to him it 
was as much honor and pleasure to yank a fish 
off the spawning bed with a grapple, as it is 
to-day for the fisherman to pick a trout off the 
surface with a five-ounce rod and a Parmachenee 
Belle. How my memory goes back to Uncle Asa, 
for some of the pleasantest remembrances of my 
boyhood were with him. 

The remembrance of him brings to my mind 
a picture of an old man with gray hair, whose 
straight-stemmed brier pipe was usually in his 
mouth, whose swear word was " By cod," and 
whose face beamed with good nature, who walked 
with a hitch in his gait, caused by a careless blow 



CAMPING OUT 35 

from a fellow-woodsman's axe, severing the cords 
on the back of his knee, so that, from boyhood to 
old age. Uncle Asa had been obliged to drag 
his leg behind him and use it as a prop to sup- 
port the other. 

It was with him that I did my first real camp- 
ing out in earnest. This was on a trip to C Pond, 
which is nine or ten miles from Andover, C Pond 
Bluff Mountain only dividing it from the Rich- 
ardson lakes. His son Humphrey, Uncle Asa, 
and myself started for the pond one pleasant 
morning. Oh, what a delightful trip we had, and, 
in my impatience to get there, I often found my- 
self a long way ahead of them, on the woods 
path, and would have to wait for them to come 
up, amusing myself in the meantime by chopping 
into logs with a light camp axe that I carried. 

One of our resting-places was a path which led 
off to the right, and which Uncle Asa told me 
was the mountain trail to the arm of the Rich- 
ardson lakes. "And, by cod, young feller," said 
he, "we'll take that path one o* these days, and 
I'll show ye the lake ; and I'll take ye up to 
Bemis Spring and show ye more trout in a 
minute than ye can shake a stick at in a week, 



36 LAKE AND FOREST 

and ye can yank out a back load in less time 
than it takes to tell it." 

On this trip we passed the Moody Ledge, in 
Sawyer Notch. This was a wild-looking preci- 
pice, a good one hundred feet high, where Uncle 
Asa told me that a man by the name of Moody 
had fallen from the top to the bottom, a number 
of years before, having climbed up there after 
young wolves. His head was split open by the 
fall, so that one could see his brains. They 
carried him to Andover, where Dr. Daniels washed 
his head out, and patched him up, and he got 
well and went off to sea and was drowned. I 
had heard Granny Gilson tell this same brain 
story before, but she always said they took his 
brains out in a three-pint tin basin and washed 
them, and that a dog got at the basin and ate 
some of them while they were getting them back 
into his head. 

About noon we stopped for dinner by a pretty 
brook, built a fire, made some tea, and opened 
our packs and got out the eatables. I had forti- 
fied myself with a chunk of pork that would 
weigh five or six pounds, and from this cut a 
square piece that would weigh about a pound. 



CAMPING OUT 



37 



Uncle Asa watched me out of the corner of 
his eye as long as he could stand it, then he 
burst into a fit of laughter, with his usual " cluck, 
cluck, cluck," and said, " By cod, young feller, 
what d'ye think yer goin' t' do with that hunk 
of pork ? " 

"I'm going to frizzle it," said I. ** You said 
frizzled pork was good, and I want to try it." 

" So it is," said he ; " but that is no sign ye 
should try to frizzle the whole hog at once. 
Here, let me show ye," and he cut a thin slice 
of the pork from the chunk, put it on a slim, 
forked stick, and stood it up by the fire. " Now," 
said he, '' split open a biscuit, and stick it on an- 
other stick under the pork, and let it get the 
drippin's on it; then get ye a dipper o' tea out 
o' the pail, and a piece o' this patridge breast 
I'm cookin', and ye'll have a dinner that'll make 
yer hair curl." 

It was the middle of the afternoon before we 
struck the shore of the pond, and hunted up a 
flat-bottomed boat which Uncle Asa had hidden 
in the bushes, and paddled up to a place called 
"The Whale's Back," about half a mile beyond. 
We built a bough lean-to, picked fine fir boughs 



38 LAKE AND FOREST 

for a bed, and, with a big log fire in front of the 
camp, I passed a night of enjoyment such as 
very few boys may experience. 

After we had tried the fish between sunset 
and dark, and been well rewarded with a good 
catch of trout, we had our supper, listened to 
some of Uncle Asa's stories, and turned in for 
the night. The sociable owls, probably startled 
by our bright camp-fire, saluted us with many a 
hoot, and kept me awake far into the night, 
either pleased or disgusted at our intrusion into 
their private wilds. Late in the night I was 
awakened by Uncle Asa, who gave me a poke 
in the ribs, and told me to " wake up and hear 
the bear hollering down on the medder." Bruin 
was either very happy, or very unhappy, for he 
was making lots of noise, which was magnified 
by the stillness of the calm night. 

At the peep of day the next morning we were 
out in the boat, and soon had all the fish we 
wanted. Although we had all the fish we cared 
for, we were to pass another night in camp, 
and spent the day in rowing around the pond, 
going down to the outlet, and on to the 
meadow to see if we could see anything of the 



CAMPING OUT 39 

bear which had given us the midnight serenade; 
but we found only his tracks, and the rotten 
logs he had been tearing to pieces to get the 
ants from them to eat. I might as well here 
add that Uncle Asa carried an old smooth-bore 
queen's-arm, with which he had caused the death 
of many a bear. On this trip, however, par- 
tridges and a few ducks were the extent of his 
prowess as a hunter. 

After another pleasant night in camp, we again 
turned the boat over in the alders, and took the 
path through the woods to Andover, carrying 
with us a good load of fish. 

Although I fondly wished for the time for 
Uncle Asa to take me to the lake, it did not 
fall to my lot to have him for a companion ; but 
with another man and boy I made my first trip 
there the following winter, and tried fishing 
through the ice, with very good success. We 
camped at the foot of The Narrows on Richard- 
son Lake, but the other boy and I made a trip 
on the ice as far as Mosquito Brook and the 
Upper Dam. 

In the middle of October, in the fall of '69, 
another boy and myself made a hunting trip to 



40 LAKE AND FOREST 

the lake in earnest. I had realized about fifteen 
dollars for some potatoes I had planted for my- 
self on my uncle's farm, and the whole of this 
I put into traps, provisions, and ammunition, and, 
with these and about an equal amount which 
my companion had, we started for the lake with 
a horse and buckboard. This was a few days 
after the " big freshet of '69," which all Maine 
remembers, for it carried away nearly every 
bridge and tore up about every brook and river 
road in the state. The lake road had suffered 
with the rest, and we soon found it too rough 
for our buckboard, and were obliged to unhitch 
from this and pack our goods over on the back 
of the horse, taking what we could carry our- 
selves. After about three miles more of climb- 
ing over rocks and through washouts, we realized 
we could go no farther with the horse. As night 
was coming on we built a bough camp in Black 
Brook notch, still four miles below the arm of 
the lake. 

The following morning the other boy took the 
horse back to Andover, while I, with eleven 
bright, shining new traps strung on my belt, a 
pack load of provisions strapped to my back. 



CAMPING OUT 41 

and a Springfield rifle bored to a shotgun, of 
which I had become the proud possessor, struck 
through the woods toward the lake. I got my 
load through, and, returning from my second 
trip, got back to the camp, where the other boy 
joined me, having been to Andover with the 
horse and returned ; and we carried the rest of 
our supplies to the lake, where we again camped, 
preparing to make a more substantial camp than 
the one where we had passed the night before, 
planning to call this our home camp. We were 
both wet to the skin, for we had had to wade a 
good part of the way, often in water nearly to our 
armpits, but both happy at being in the woods ; 
and we went to work with a will, clearing away, 
and building our new camp, and getting ready for 
the night. 

When morning came we were up bright and 
early, and after breakfast was out of the way, we 
commenced to set traps along the brook for mink, 
and to run sable lines back on the mountains. 
Here we stayed about two weeks, and at the end 
of that time, having swapped a sable and mink 
skin for a skiff that was on the lake, with some 
hunters, we moved on up the lake to Metalluk 



42 LAKE AND FOREST 

Point, near the mouth of Metalluk Brook, by the 
old Richardson farm, and six miles from the arm 
of the lake. Here we trapped the mink and 
muskrat with very good success; but the other 
boy, getting tired of roughing it, returned to his 
home in Andover, and I was left alone to look 
after the traps, which I very much enjoyed. 

As darkness was settling down at night, I 
would always go to the lake to get fresh water for 
morning, and after filling my two-quart camp 
kettle by walking out on a friendly log half 
buried in the sand, I have stood on the shore and 
looked over the water of what seemed to me at 
the time a very great lake, and at the big moun- 
tains in the distance, on every side, so dense and 
black with heavy woods and the spreading dark- 
ness ; and this, perhaps, with the night cry of the 
lonely loon, which Theodore Winthrop once de- 
scribed as coming from a being that was " exiled 
from happiness that it never knew," would im- 
press me with a little sense of loneliness. But on 
returning to my camp and brightening up the fire, 
all loneliness would be banished, and it was in this 
camp that I passed some of the happiest hours of 
my early woods life. And even now, in fancy, I 



CAMPING OUT 43 

can go back to that pleasant camp on Metalluk 
Point, can again hear the night cry of the loon 
and owl, see the sparks go up from the blazing 
camp-fire, again smell the balsam bough bed, and 
taste the water from that smoky camp kettle. 

" Still o'er those scenes my memory waits, 
And lo'es to brood wi' miser care ; 
Time the impression deeper makes, 
As streams their channels deeper wear." 



CHAPTER III 

THE INDIAN CHIEF METALLUK 

IT was near this camp that the lodge of the 
Indian chief Metalluk had stood years 
before, the ruins of his cellar being still to 
be seen, though all the logs had rotted away. 
Here, one cold winter's day, his good squaw, 
Oozalluc, had died, and he, being of too affec- 
tionate a nature to bury her in the cold snow, had 
twisted some withes, and suspended her body in 
the smoke hole of his cabin. In this way he pre- 
served her body until spring, when he could bury 
her in a cosey spot in the bright sunshine. 

This, I have been told by old hunters, was an 
absolute fact, and that the withes were yet in the 
smoke hole when they first visited the cabin. 

After all this devotion, it seems that the cruel 
white man should have let Oozalluc rest in peace, 
but a few years later her bones were taken up by 
some enterprising doctor in a party on a fishing trip. 

44 



THE INDIAN CHIEF METALLUK 45 

Metalluk was once a chief of the St. Francis 
tribe, but I have understood that for some reason 
he had been expelled from the tribe, and he and 
his squaw had found their way through the woods 
to the Richardson Lake, and built their home on 
Metalluk Point, leaving their children, two sons 
and a daughter, to grow up with the tribe. After 
Oozalluc died, Metalluk abandoned his quiet home 
and moved to Metalluk Island in Umbagog Lake, 
and a few years later on to the Magalloway, near 
the lower Metalluk Pond, where he built a camp. 

Metalluk's two sons, Olumbo and Parmaginnie, 
after they grew up, I am told, used to make fre- 
quent trips to their father's home on Richardson 
Lake. One fall, it seems that Metalluk and 
Olumbo were trapping there alone, and Olumbo, 
perhaps pining for his Canadian home, decided to 
take French leave, — or Indian leave, — and take 
the spoils with him. Accordingly he returned to 
the camp early one day, and packed the furs into 
his canoe and started up the lake. Metalluk 
returned to the camp soon after Olumbo had 
taken his departure, and finding the furs gone, 
and seeing Olumbo paddling hard toward the 
head of the lake, guessed what had happened. 



46 LAKE AND FOREST 

and sprang into his canoe and followed. It was 
six miles to the head of the lake, and, although 
Olumbo had quite a start, he found himself no 
match for his father, for just as he reached the 
shore at the head of the lake, Metalluk jumped 
into his canoe and gave him a good trouncing. 
The canoe was overturned, and Olumbo received a 
good ducking, as well as his trouncing, and had to 
take to the woods empty-handed, while Metalluk 
packed the furs in his canoe and paddled back 
to camp. 

Possibly Parmachenee Lake derived its name 
from Parmaginnie, as this lake must have been 
much frequented by them, as on their trail from 
the Richardson lakes to their Canadian home, they 
traversed in their canoes nearly the whole length 
of the Lower and Upper Magalloway, its outlet 
and inlet, as well as across the lake. 

At Metalluk Pond, on the Magalloway River, 
when Metalluk, now an old man and blind in 
one eye by an injury years before, was drawing 
a log for firewood by the aid of his tump-line, 
which was used in carrying his pack, and which 
like himself was getting old, the line broke, 
and Metalluk fell forward, striking a broken 



THE INDIAN CHIEF METALLUK 47 

Stub into his remaining eye, which rendered him 
totally blind. He felt his way into his cabin, 
where he lay for several days, with but little fire 
and but little to eat. Two of his hunter friends, 
who were Magalloway settlers, going by, called at 
his cabin, and found him lying in his bunk. In 
response to their *' Hello, Metalluk," he said, 
" Me know him voice, but me no see him." 
Although they were anxious to take him out of 
the woods, he would not go with them, but 
wanted his daughter, who lived not far from 
the New Hampshire border, in Canada ; and, leav- 
ing him fuel, wood, and water, they got word to 
his daughter, who came with her son. I have 
been told by a Magalloway man that he met 
them on their way out of the woods, the young 
man ahead with a stick in his hand, the old man 
grasping the other end, and the daughter bring- 
ing up the rear with the pack. 

When Metalluk lived in his home on Metalluk 
Point, on the Richardson Lake, he used to make 
frequent trips to Andover to sell his fur, and 
used to make his home at my Great-grandfather 
Merrill's, and he and my grandfather became 
fast friends. Like most of the Indians, Metal- 



48 LAKE AND FOREST 

luk had a weakness for firewater, and used to 
purchase quite a quantity and be under its in- 
fluence for a few days, not going back to the 
lakes until he had finished it. In answer to an 
inquiry as to why he did not take it to the 
lake, he said, " S'pose me burn up me camp and 
me dog ? " One time when he was purchasing 
some of the ardent, he questioned the price, 
thinking it was a little high, and was told by 
the trader, *' It costs a good deal to winter a 
barrel of whiskey ; it costs as much as it does 
to winter a cow." His reply was, ** He no eat 
um so much hay, s'pose maybe he drink um as 
much water." 

My grandfather's name was Moses, but Metal- 
luk's name for him was " Moselem." On one 
occasion, having trouble with a trapper at the 
lakes, who, he claimed, was infringing on his 
territory, and catching his beaver, he walked to 
Andover to consult " Moselem " in regard to it. 
Grandfather's verdict was, ** Well, Metalluk, if 
they're your beaver, you must catch 'em." 

When at grandfather's he would not sleep in 
a bed, but would always sleep on the floor, with 
his head toward the large, open fire, with a 




My First Steamer, the '■'• Oquossoc 
A Winter Hunt 



THE INDIAN CHIEF METALLUK 49 

blanket around him. Once he got too near the 
fire, and a man coming in saw his hair smoking, 
and without warning caught Metalluk by the 
feet and pulled him away from the fire. Metal- 
luk jumped to his feet and gave chase, but did 
not quite strike the door into an adjoining room, 
through which the man darted, but went through 
the next one, which was the cellar door, and 
got quite a sobering off by taking a header 
down cellar. 

I do not think that grandfather or any of his 
Andover friends ever knew what became of the 
old Indian after he left the lakes, as communica- 
tion was not what it is to-day, and it was from 
Magalloway settlers that I learned of his becom- 
ing blind and being taken to Canada by his 
daughter. But I have learned from people in 
Stewartstown, New Hampshire, that Metalluk was 
not happy in his daughter's home in Canada, and 
was continually talking of *' Moselem," and if he 
could get to the place where " Moselem " lived, 
he would be all right. Finally a boy was em- 
ployed to take him from Canada to the place 
where " Moselem " lived. It was in the spring 
of the year, when the snow was going off, and 



50 LAKE AND FOREST 

the travelling was hard. They got as far as 
Stewartstown when the boy got discouraged with 
his job, and, leaving poor old Metalluk in the road 
near a house in the night, took French leave back 
to Canada. In the morning the poor old blind 
Indian was taken in and fed by the kind farmer, 
and later was bid off as a town charge, living 
two years with one man and six with another, 
where he died, and 

*' Gave earth's favored lodgers room, 
By sleeping in a pauper's tomb." 

A man who was a boy in Metalluk's last home 
in Stewartstown has told me that he remembered 
him well. In the morning when old Metalluk 
rose, he was given a basin of water, when he 
would unbutton his shirt to the last button, roll 
it back well, and give himself a good bath. Dur- 
ing the day he passed much of his time on the 
lounge, occupying his time by running his hand 
through his hair, and, whenever finding a hair 
longer than the rest, pulling it out. 



CHAPTER IV 

FIRST EXPERIENCE IN LOGGING 

AFTER the lake had frozen over and the 
snow began to get deep, I took up my 
traps and returned home to Andover with 
my fur, for which, though of not very large 
amount, I realized a welcome little sum, and found 
good use for the most of my money, which left 
me pretty nearly down to " hard pan " again. 
After attending the school in the village a few 
weeks, and feeling obliged to be earning some- 
thing, I started for the logging swamps in Upton. 
There I found but little work, and soon put 
my snowshoes on and struck through the woods, 
by the Pond-in-the-River, for Middle Dam on 
Richardson Lake, then taking the lake to Upper 
Dam, eight miles distant, which I reached just 
as night had fallen. I had hoped to get work 
here, but found there was nothing for me to do ; 
but Mr. Frank Allen was in charge, and was very 

SI 



52 LAKE AND FOREST 

kind to me, and as he had worked the summer 
before at Chamberlain farm on Chamberlain Lake, 
for Mr. Coe, who was Maine's greatest lumber- 
man, and who owned the country about Upper 
Dam, as well as a great deal of land in the Cham- 
berlain Lake region, he was a man I was very 
glad to meet, as he could tell me of the place I 
so much desired to know about. He also told me 
there was logging going on near Bemis Stream, on 
the Big Lake, about eight miles from Upper Dam, 
by men from Rangeley, and I decided to try my 
luck in that direction. 

The following morning, asking Mr. Allen what 
I owed him for my night's accommodation, on 
being told that my bill was seventy-five cents, I 
fished hard in my pockets, but seventy-four cents 
was all I could raise. Not wishing to let Mr. 
Allen know that was all the money I had, I said 
that was all the change I had. He probably 
guessed my predicament, for he quickly passed 
it back, saying that I was more than welcome to 
what I had had. If he had asked the usual fee, 
I should have entered the region above the Upper 
Dam one cent behind the world in my finances ; 
but as it was I had seventy-four cents, the clothes 



FIRST EXPERIENCE IN LOGGING 53 

I Stood in, besides the change in my pack, and 
my snowshoes ; and although I could not weigh 
down the eighty-pound weight on the scales, I 
had a good appetite and was fairly full of day's 
works. 

How well I remember snowshoeing down the 
big lake, past the big island, toward the mouth 
of Bemis Stream, thinking of Chamberlain farm 
and Chamberlain Lake as I went, and wondering 
how I could work it to make Mr. Coe acquainted 
with the fact that I wanted a job there, little realiz- 
ing that I had already found my future stamping 
ground, and thirty-three years later would write 
a story telling of twenty-six years' experience in 
steamboating on this very lake, of my Camp Bemis, 
the Birches, and the Barker, entertaining many 
sportsmen and summer visitors during the season, 
and would be writing of this very trip. My 
thoughts were absorbed in Chamberlain farm in 
the future, and striking a job at the mouth of 
Bemis Stream in the present. 

As I approached the shore just above Bemis 
Stream, I saw a landing of logs, with men and 
teams on the lake, and by the men was told where 
to find the logging camp, about a mile distant. 



54 LAKE AND FOREST 

I had no trouble in finding the camp and was 
told by the cook that it was owned and run by 
'• Dan and Bill T. Hoar " and '' Hen Kimball," 
and that the prospect of getting work was good, 
though the bosses were in the woods, and would 
not be in camp till night. Accordingly I threw 
off my pack and made myself comfortable, await- 
ing the coming in of the men. 

The camp was a large, low-walled structure, 
mostly roof, the roof covered with splits about 
four feet long, the walls about two logs high, the 
typical logging camp of that time. The door 
was not over five feet high, and about as wide 
as high, making the men stoop as they went 
through, and causing many a man to forget the 
third commandment when he did not stoop quite 
low enough. The first six feet to the left of the 
door was the wood dingle, which was kept well- 
filled with large logs, ten to twelve feet in length, 
for the fire. The right of the door was used as 
a sort of storeroom, where the molasses barrel 
was kept, also the pork barrel, some extra bar- 
rels of flour, and the grindstone, which was in 
use a good deal of the time evenings and Sun- 
days, while the men ground their axes. The 



FIRST EXPERIENCE IN LOGGING 55 

camp was floored from the door to the fire bed by 
poles about four inches through, laid down close 
together, and the top adzed off quite smoothly. 
The fire bed, which took up fully one-third of the 
camp, was of earth, built up a little above the 
level of the floor, with two rows of stones about 
six feet apart as fire-dogs. 

On either side of the camp were berths, lined 
up with splits overhead and on each side. These 
berths were twenty-five feet long, and were ex- 
pected to hold eighteen or twenty men, and when 
the camp was full, it was the rule that no man 
should sleep on his back, but on his side, ** spoon 
fashion," and one could not change unless all 
changed. The berths were well covered with fine 
boughs, and it was a Sunday job, occasionally 
through the winter, to "bough the berth," which 
was giving it a coating of fresh boughs. 

The bedding was two long spreads, running the 
entire length of the berth, the under one being but 
one thickness of heavy blanket, and the upper of 
two thicknesses of blanket, with cotton batting 
between, well tacked, making it about two or 
three inches thick; and it was the rule that the 
last man up in the morning should roll up the 



56 LAKE AND FOREST 

spreads, which was done by giving them two or 
three rolls toward the head of the berth. 

At the foot of the berth, and running the full 
length on each side of the fire, at convenient height, 
was the ''deacon seat," made from logs about 
fifteen inches through, usually split, then hewn 
smooth. Here you would find the men the most 
of the time evenings, either sitting on the seat, 
or half reclining on the berth, with their backs 
against the rolled-up spreads, and their feet hang- 
ing over the " deacon seat," chewing gum, telling 
stories, and singing songs. A cord, run from one 
log to another above and to one side of the fire, 
made a place for the men to hang their wet 
mittens and stockings, and here and there were 
the tops of little fir trees, nicely peeled, with the 
Hmbs cut off to about two inches in length and 
sharpened, also making convenient hooks for 
mittens and stockings. 

The farther end of the camp from the door 
was the cook's department, the flour barrel and 
shelves for the tin dishes being next the fire, 
and the two tables for the men, running the 
entire width of the camp, with the exception of 
a passageway between to the seat at the back 



FIRST EXPERIENCE IN LOGGING 57 

side, which was made the same as the deacon 
seat, and ran the length of the tables against the 
wall, just room being allowed between the wall 
and the table for the men to sit. When a man 
had a seat at the farther end of the table at the 
back, and was a little late, he would step up on 
the seat, the men would tip forward, then he 
would walk along the seat to his place. The 
seat on the other side was made the same, round 
legs being put in with a two-inch auger. 

At each end of the camp a short piece of log 
was left out to admit of some panes of glass, 
which, with the help of the smoke hole, furnished 
the daylight for the camp. The fire furnished 
the heat, and as cooking stoves were but little 
known at that time, in the logging camps, also 
answered all purposes for cooking. Two large 
bakers extended each side of the fire, and at 
the end next the cook's department was the 
indispensable beanhole. A crane over the fire 
suspended the kettle and the big teapot, which 
half-filled thirty or forty pint basins for each 
meal. 

Two large logs, about eight feet apart, ran the 
entire length of the camp, higher up than a 



58 LAKE AND FOREST 

man's head, resting on the log ends of the camp. 
These were called the '' lug " beams, and formed 
the foundation of the smoke hole, which was 
built of small logs, from five to seven inches 
through, by notching the ends and locking them 
together, the same as a log camp is built, some- 
times extending above the roof for six or eight 
feet. 

The whole roof, on top of the splits, was 
covered with coarse boughs, two or three feet 
thick, quite large ones being used at the bottom, 
to hold the weight of the boughs and snow off 
the roof, and form an air space above the splits. 
This made the camp much warmer, and prevented 
the snow from melting, and what little water did 
come from it would run off on the splits ; whereas, 
if the snow came to the splits, it would form ice, 
which would back the water up and cause the 
roof to leak. After the snow got deep, more 
or less holes would be thawed through the snow 
by heat from the roof, the smoke hole and whole 
roof forming a ventilator ; and but little sickness 
was known in the camps. 

How different are the logging camps of to- 
day. Now the roofs are either boarded or 



FIRST e:^perience in logging 59 

covered with poles, and well covered with tarred 
paper, making a roof through which neither water 
nor air can penetrate ; and instead of the big, 
open fire, is the cook stove and big heater, around 
which the men hover in the evening. Instead 
of the " field bed," where all sleep together, the 
berths are partitioned off for two men. Though 
the camps are much more comfortable for all 
kinds of weather, and there is far more variety 
in the food, there is four times the sickness that 
there was in the old-time camp. Magic yeast 
and cream of tartar have done away with the 
old-time " emptin's tub," which, when kept at an 
even temperature, and soured right, would turn 
out as good biscuit as ever a man need to put 
in his mouth, at least they seemed so to me 
then. 

As I sat on the deacon seat and watched the 
thirty-five or forty men come in, all strangers to 
me, I did not know what to think of them, and 
I guess they did not know what to think of me 
by the way they stared ; but I soon found them 
very sociable and pleasant, and along in the 
evening, after getting pretty well acquainted, and 
answering many questions as to how I got there, 



60 LAKE AND FOREST 

I screwed up my courage and slid along on the 
deacon seat toward the three proprietors, whom I 
found all together, and asked if they wanted any 
more men. Dan gave a chuckle. Bill T. said, 
" Gorry, I don't know," and Hen Kimball said, 
" Gracious mighty ! Is that what they call such 
fellers as you down where you come from ? " 

After considerable laughing and joking, they 
said, if I thought I could shovel snow and use an 
axe, I could go to work, and they would pay me 
what it was worth. This was very satisfactory to 
me, and the following morning I took the axe and 
the shovel that were given me, and struck into the 
woods with the rest of the men. My first job was 
swamping a road, which had to be shovelled first. 
We would shovel through and cut out the trees 
and old logs, when it would be ready for the teams. 
My companion, with whom I was set to work, was 
a young man, able in body, and with the heart of a 
Christian, for he at once proceeded to take five 
shovels wide for himself, and leave me three, which 
I fully appreciated, not expecting to find that kind 
of treatment in a stranger and a lumberman. 
After the road was shovelled, it left banks so high 
that we could fall trees across and drive the teams 



FIRST EXPERIENCE IN LOGGING 6l 

under them, this being one of the old-fashioned 
winters, when the snow was a good six feet deep 
on a level. 

This work, though hard, I enjoyed very much, 
and soon felt quite at home, and was fast friends 
with the crew, although I fear I did not treat 
them as well as they did me ; for I was not all 
over the boy, and there were many foolish pranks 
that I was ready to try on some of my friends. 
One of my favorite tricks, and one which afterward 
became a part of the regular course of initiation of 
all newcomers, as well as being yanked up the 
smoke hole with a rope around his ankle, was the 
power of mesmerism which I pretended to have, 
and which, my first Sunday, I prevailed on one of 
the men to let me try on him, claiming that I was 
very sure that I could put him to sleep. He was 
just as sure I could not, and was willing for me to 
try it on him. On the sly, I took one of the cook's 
tin plates and held it over a lighted tallow candle 
till the bottom was as black as could be, and put- 
ting a little water in it, gave this to him. I then 
took a clean plate, with water, myself, and we 
bestrode the deacon seat, facing each other, he 
bolstered up against the splits at the end of the 



62 LAKE AND FOREST 

seat. He was to imitate my motions exactly, and 
not try to keep awake if he felt sleepy. With a few 
flourishes of my hand before his eyes, I proceeded 
to dip my middle finger in the water, pass it around 
on the inside a few times, then on the bottom of 
the plate, then place it on my forehead, draw it 
down my face, across my cheek, around my chin, 
and up on the other side, he imitating my example 
exactly, leaving a big black mark with every 
touch. Another flourish, and more from the out- 
side of the plate, and the finger was passed from 
the middle of the forehead down the nose to the 
tip end, and so on till the face of the subject was 
well marked. 

Many of the men had business in the bunks, 
faces down in the spreads, while others, with more 
self-control, stood around, and added much merri- 
ment to the occasion by suggestions to the subject, 
telling him that he was the sleepiest-looking man 
they ever saw who pretended to be awake, and 
he might as well shut his eyes up, give up beat, 
and go to sleep. At the proper time some one 
passed the looking-glass, telling him to look for 
himself. 

The first look was one of surprise and astonish- 



FIRST EXPERIENCE IN LOGGING 63 

ment, and the next was a look for " The Trapper," 
as they had nicknamed me ; but I had slipped my 
leg over the deacon seat, and was well toward the 
other end of the camp, as the looking-glass went 
down ; for experience had taught me that it was 
best not to be too near when the subject woke up, 
as he always did with more or less force, proving 
to be very wide awake. And it took some of the 
best men in camp to persuade the victim that I did 
not need a trouncing; and my legs stood me in 
good service in the chase-the-squirrel game which 
followed around some of the big fellows I 
knew would take my part. But it was soon all 
over, and we were just as good friends as 
before. 

What pleasant remembrances I have of that 
old logging camp, and what a charm it had for 
me ! Though I have seen many a home since 
then, fitted up with all the elegance that wealth 
and good taste produce, I have never seen a home 
that was more fascinating to me than the rough 
camp, as I used to see it, after the Sunday morn- 
ing snooze, when a number of the men were 
making weekly visits to their homes in Rangeley, 
going the night before, and we had plenty of 



64 LAKE AND FOREST 

room, and did not have to get up till after day- 
light had made its way down the smoke hole. 
How I watched the light creep down and spread 
over the camp, exposing to view the log ribs and 
clean split roof, and thinking that no one was 
better situated than I ! 

There is nothing that a man enjoys better in 
a "field bed" than the absence of a few bed- 
fellows ; for the field beds of the old-time camps 
were calculated for a few less men than they 
usually held, especially after the snow got deep 
toward spring and required large crews. What 
a fatherly interest those men seemed to take in 
me, and how many nights I have been cuddled 
in the arms of some big fellow, protecting me 
with his body on one side, and laying his arm 
over me, making a brace ! I have half awak- 
ened to feel my protector punch the man on the 
other side, who had got on his back, and, with the 
exhaust turned out of the stack, was holding his 
bigness, both in space and in the snore he sent 
forth, till there was danger that the roof would 
leak at the next thaw, soon to be brought back 
to earth by the sharp punch from my companion, 
with a " Damn ye, spoon ! Y're squatting th' 



FIRST EXPERIENCE IN LOGGING 65 

daylights out 'n th' Trapper;" and I would get 
a few long breaths, way down, as he would roll 
back on his side, and I would soon forget my- 
self, not to know anything again till the cook's 
''Turn out." 



CHAPTER V 

RIVER DRIVING 

THE winter soon wore away, but the spring 
was a late one, and we had good logging 
till the 1 6th of April, when the teams 
left the woods. Then we proceeded to boom 
the landings, the boom having to be strung 
around the logs, the logs of the boom having to 
be bored with a five-inch auger, about a foot from 
the end, fastened with a yellow birch thorough- 
short passed through the hole, and a well-made 
maple pin at each end. The holes were bored at 
right angles, making what the men called a 
"swivel joint" in one end, and an "up-and- 
down " in the other. 

When the booming was done, with a few others 
I went to " Squire " Toothaker's camp on South 
Bog Stream, which empties into Rangeley Lake, 
where I was to remain ; for I had hired with him 

66 



RIVER DRIVING 6j 

to help get headworks and pickpoles ready for 
the drive, and then go through on the drive. 

Mr. Toothaker was the king lumberman of 
the region, being a partner of Mr. Coe in the 
ownership of land about the lakes, and doing 
quite an extensive logging business, running a 
camp himself in company with his son, *' John R.," 
as he was called by every one, who always drove 
one of the best teams, and had full charge of the 
camp when his father was not there. The other 
camps in the vicinity took the jobs of him, 
putting the logs on the landings at so much per 
thousand. Mr. Toothaker had made a fortune 
by his industry, and now lived in Phillips, mak- 
ing occasional trips to the lakes to look after his 
interests there. He was '* The Squire" to every 
man, woman, and child, and was the friend of 
every laboring man ; and many was the poor man 
he aided in purchasing a farm, stock, or tools, 
with nothing more than the man's word for a 
guarantee. Although he was a stern man, and 
at times would give one the impression that he 
was a hard man, he w^as never unreasonable in 
the work he expected of the men ; and no mat- 
ter how much of a seemingly unnecessary " call 



68 LAKE AND FOREST 

down " he gave a man, or how mean he made 
him feel, yet the goodness of his heart shone 
through it all before he got through talking ; and 
he usually brought the man back to thinking 
well of himself, as well as of the Squire, and 
it was often hard to decide whether he meant to 
scold or not. 

I was the errand boy of the camp when any- 
thing had to be done, and often made trips to 
Rangeley with some message or for some article ; 
and my first trip there was with Squire Toothaker, 
who had come into camp to take a look at things 
before the travelling on the lake broke up. 
Something from Rangeley was wanted at the 
camp, and I was honored with a ride with the 
Squire from the camp to Rangeley, behind his 
favorite horse, '' Old Troublesome," which had 
a record on the ice of a mile in 2.29, and of 
roading one hundred miles in a day, and fol- 
lowing it, and the Squire allowed nothing to pass 
him on the road. 

Mr. Toothaker was a man looked up to by all, 
and I felt it a great honor to be favored with a 
seat by his side to Rangeley. I had seen him in 
the woods a few times, and he had been very 



RIVER DRIVING 69 

pleasant and talkative, and this day was more 
sociable than common as we sped over the 
smooth ice, bringing me out in his conversation, 
and asking me how I would like to go home 
with him and go to school, telling me that if I 
would, and do as he wanted me to, I should go 
through college, and he would give me a chance 
to keep his books. I jokingly told him I should 
probably go in the door and out the window, but 
he assured me I would be all right if I did not 
think more of having a good time and playing 
ball, than of studying my lessons. I was much 
elated by the proposition, and although I wanted 
nothing better than to live in the woods, I knew the 
advantages of an education, and felt favorably 
toward the opportunity he so generously offered. 
But there are few smooth stretches in life 
where we do not encounter obstacles, and such 
was to be my fate, for, as we neared the shore, 
the ice had thawed away from it, leaving 
a few yards of water between the ice and 
shore. The Squire, with his usual courage 
and go-ahead, encouraged Old Troublesome to 
jump into the water, which he did, well up'^ 
to his sides, and the next moment the ice on 



70 LAKE AND FOREST 

the Squire's side gave way, and over we went, 
Mr. Toothaker going into the icy water nearly 
all over, while I came on top, and a good jump 
took me ashore, dry shod. The horse had 
broken away and the pung had righted itself, 
and Old Troublesome was going into the road 
at a good gait, uncertain whether to be frightened 
or not. I took after him, and got the reins that 
were dragging, and the Squire came up, drag- 
ging the buffalo, and not in very good humor. 

" Now, that is what I call a pretty smart piece 
of business," said he, stamping first one foot 
and then the other, looking back at the place 
where he had taken his bath. " And you didn't 
get wet a bit, did ye ? Well, I got wet all 
over." 

" I am sorry," said I. " Did I hurt you when 
I struck on you.-'" 

" Hurt me ! I didn't feel ye any more than I 
would a Long Pond mosquito that lit on me; 
but I don't think much of that way of doing 
business." 

I did not feel sure from his manner whether 
he was giving me a going over or himself, till he 
said good-naturedly, a few minutes later, "Well, 



RIVER DRIVING 71 

you run like a fox. I am glad you caught him ; 
I always hate to have a horse get away." 

We got up into the road and started for Green- 
vale, which was about three miles farther on, 
where we were to stop over night. On the way 
the Squire had some business at a house, and he 
hitched and cared for the horse, and we both 
went inside. After his business was completed, 
we came out of the house together. It had 
grown quite dark, and I went to get the horse, 
leaving the Squire talking with the man of the 
house. 

While I was unhitching and getting the blanket 
off the horse, a team drove up and stopped in 
front of the house ; and as I did not see Mr. 
Toothaker when I got turned around, I thought 
he had got into the team, which was then driving 
away at a rapid rate. I jumped into his 
sleigh and followed on, Troublesome and I having 
no idea they would get a great ways ahead, and 
he kept his head well up to their shoulders. 
I could see in the darkness two men, one of 
whom I thought was the Squire. 

As we went gliding along at a lively gait, I 
holding a tight rein on Old Troublesome, having 



72 LAKE AND FOREST 

visions, perhaps, of college days, and the time 
when, with a pencil behind my ear, I would 
speak of the business of the concern as ''we" 
instead of "A. T. & Coe.," I fear I was approach- 
ing that state so common to young men, and 
which so few escape for a longer or shorter run, 
even at this period. I refer to the time when 
the young man's head begins to swell, and the 
one affected is not the one afflicted. My success 
in handling Troublesome, and thinking Mr. Tooth- 
aker was a witness of my horsemanship, gave 
me the feehng that he would have perfect con- 
fidence in me, and that I should have to come 
home from college to drive the horse at every 
PhiUips horse trot, when I would show the boys 
how I could make him step. 

But my mind soon took a different turn, for 
instead of the team turning in at Greenvale, 
which I was sure was the Greenvale House, from 
its appearance, where I knew the Squire was 
going to stop, it dashed straight on toward 
Phillips ; and with a sinking feeling clear to my 
toes, I reined up Old Troublesome, and wondered 
what on earth was the best thing to do, whether 
to hitch Troublesome to a tree and take to the 



RIVER DRIVING 



73 



woods, or get back as fast as I could, and take 
whatever the Squire was pleased to give me. I 
soon decided that the latter was the better way, 
and so I got out, took Old Troublesome by the 
bits and straightened him out into the road, 
jumped in, and encouraged him into a quick 
pace for the return trip. 

I realized what the horse was I was driving; 
but when following the team, and thinking the 
Squire was near, and had confidence in me that 
I could handle the horse, I would have had 
courage to tackle anything in the horse Hne. 
But with darkness added to a rather bad spring 
road, and Troublesome showing evidence of his 
displeasure at what he undoubtedly considered 
was uncalled for and a confounded piece of boy 
foolishness, I urged him on in a very uncomfort- 
able frame of mind. I fortunately kept the 
horse in the road and the pung right-side up, 
till I saw the tall form of Mr. Toothaker in the 
darkness, and I braced myself for the coming 
storm, which broke as follows : " I would like to 
know what under the sun you think you are 
doing with that horse ; what on earth you are 
running away from me for > I don't think much 



74 LAKE AND FOREST 

of keeping a dozen horses, and to be made to 
foot it halfway to Phillips ; and I want you to 
understand I am a little particular who drives 
Old Troublesome." 

Old Troublesome rubbed his head against the 
Squire's arm affectionately, as much as to say, 

" I've had a d 1 of a time." I was as meek 

as Moses, and could only say that I was sorry, 
and that I thought he was in the team that 
stopped in front of the house when I unhitched. 

** I wasn't," said he. " I went back into that 
house ; and it wouldn't have been very hard work 
for you to have found out where I was without 
driving that horse all over town." 

There was not much I could say, but I hurried 
out, and we turned the team around, and started 
again toward Greenvale. After a few minutes 
the Squire said, '* I should thought he would 
have got away from ye." On being assured 
that I had no trouble, he asked, " Well, did any- 
body get by ye .'' " Again being assured that 
they did not, he said, *' Well, as long as he 
didn't get away from ye, and there didn't any- 
body get by ye, there's no great damage done. 
You probably thought I needed a good walk 



RIVER DRIVING 75 

after treading me into the lake, and I do feel 
better for it ; but I was scared when I see ye 
driving off, for fear he would get away from ye, 
and kill you or himself." 

After passing the night at Greenvale, Old 
Troublesome was hitched up and the Squire 
went on to Phillips, while I, with whatever I 
had been sent for in my possession, returned to 
our camp on South Bog Stream. How pleasant 
it seemed that bright morning to be footing it 
all alone over the smooth ice of Rangeley Lake, 
and how wild and free the woods life seemed 
to me ; and I decided that the man who could 
use an axe or a cantdog, or handle the lumber- 
man's bateau, was a king beside the poor fellow 
who had to be enclosed in four walls, figuring 
over long accounts in an office, and that I could 
get along very well without any college educa- 
tion. 

As soon as the ice left South Bog Stream we 
began rolling the logs into the stream from the 
landings, and driving them down to the lake. 
As the logs would generally leave the landings 
in gluts, it was usually my work to be on the 
logs with a pickpole and single them out, push- 



76 LAKE AND FOREST 

ing some up and some down, so that they would 
be less likely to jam. As I was thus engaged 
one afternoon, I saw the Squire pass me on 
his way to the landing, and when we were all 
around the fire in camp that night, he gave me 
a puff which produced a swelled head again. 

" Well, Trapper," said he, " you were working 
over those logs in great shape to-day, when I 
came up by." 

"It was interesting," said I, "to single them 
out, and see them go down river." 

" That was just the point," said the Squire. 
" I came up that stream for half a mile, and 
I never saw spruce run so handsome, and I 
knew somebody was turning out who was in- 
terested in what they were doing. It isn't always 
the biggest man, or the man who can make the 
biggest show when he knows that the boss is 
around ; it is taking an interest in his work, and 
working to the best advantage, that makes him 
valuable." 

He had probably taken this chance to preach 
a sermon to the rest of the men, who were lis- 
tening, and it did me a world of good to receive 
such a compliment from him. 



RIVER DRIVING 77 

As soon as the lakes were cleared of ice, we 
hooked our headworks on to a boom of logs and 
proceeded to wind it across the lake, taking two 
to three million feet of logs to a boom. 

The headworks were made of logs about thirty 
feet long, being pinned solidly together, making 
a raft perhaps twenty-five feet wide. In a large 
log in the centre of this was placed a maple 
spindle, six feet long, made from a big tree, one 
end being worked off to a tenon, six inches 
one way and the whole bigness of the stick 
the other, and a foot long, being well fitted into 
a mortise made to receive it in the big log. The 
capstan, which went outside of this, was a good- 
sized spruce, split open and hollowed out in the 
centre, pinned solidly together at the top and 
bottom by a wide maple slab hewn out perhaps 
four or five inches in thickness. This was set 
on to the spindle, and between the shoulder of 
the spindle and the bottom of the capstan was 
placed a large piece of pork rind for the capstan 
to revolve upon, and was called by the men a 
"pork rind jewel." The inside of the capstan 
was well greased with fresh lard. Eight holes 
were mortised in the capstan about as high as 



78 LAKE AND FOREST 

a man's breast, to receive the capstan bars, eight 
feet long, which were hewn out from straight- 
grained maple wood. Two men were supposed 
to man each bar, making sixteen men to a head- 
works. With each headworks was a bateau 
manned by six men, one at each end with a 
paddle, and four oarsmen, or midshipmen. An 
anchor line, 600 or 800 feet in length, and an 
anchor weighing from 175 to 225 pounds, was 
an important part of the outfit, the anchor being 
carried out on the stern of a bateau, the length 
of the line, and then thrown overboard, when the 
line would be wound around the capstan by the 
men on the bars, drawing the logs up to it. 
In this way the logs were worked across the 
lakes. 

Two headworks were usually lashed together, 
and attached to a boom, giving the advantage 
of keeping the strain on the boom, as one anchor 
could always be kept drawing. When the anchors 
were carried out, both boats were employed, one 
hooking on ahead of the other, making eight 
oarsmen to drag the long line through the water. 
When the call of ** All gone " would be given by 
the man paying out the line from the capstan, 



RIVER DRIVING 79 

there would be a splash as the heavy anchor 
would go overboard, and a moment later would 
come the cry from the boatmen, " Wind away " ; 
and the two bateaux would whirl, being released 
from one another the moment the anchor was 
dropped, and join in a lively spurt to see which 
would reach the headworks first. There was 
always rivalry between the boats' crews, and it 
was always watched with interest, to see which 
bowman would first strike his calked boots on 
their respective headworks. As soon as the cry 
came, '' Wind away," the men on the headworks 
would clap the bars into place and take in slack 
line on the run ; but as the heavy anchor took 
hold we would settle down to slow, steady work, 
joined by the men from the bateau until the 
other anchor on the other headworks was ready 
to be taken out. When our boat's crew would 
hitch on and assist in taking out their anchor, 
while the spare men of their headworks would 
join us on the bars, until the cry came of " Wind 
away," when they would jump for their bars, 
clapping them into place, and hurry in the slack 
line. 

Taking logs across the lake in this way was 



80 LAKE AND FOREST 

hard, steady work, and was usually kept up day 
and night as long as there was no head wind to 
interfere. We were often three days and two 
nights without sleep, and once I remember we 
worked four days and three nights, from the 
time when we wound our boom out from the 
mouth of Kennebago Stream, till we tied up in 
Trout Cove, at the Upper Dam, keeping con- 
tinually at it, with but very little sleep. But 
sometimes we would get a shore hold in the lee 
of a point, and lie for several days until the 
head wind went down, when we would again go 
forward. At these times, when we had a shore 
hold, and there was no prospect of the wind 
going down, we would go ashore to the wangan 
tent, and would put in the most of the time 
sleeping. Being blown into Bemis was the 
dread of the men, as it was a hard place to get 
out of, the prevailing wind being generally north- 
west, which was a head wind all the way to the 
Upper Dam. 

The cook's crew, which consisted of a cook, 
cookee, and wangan man, generally followed along, 
pitching their tent on the shore, near the boom. 
It was the place of the cookee and wangan man 



RIVER DRIVING 8l 

to bring our four meals a day to us in the wangan 
boat ; and how good those baked beans and bis- 
cuits were that Dan Quimby used to make. I 
have eaten meals at some of the best hotels since 
then, but have never found anything that tasted 
better than a chunk of Dan Quimby's ginger- 
bread, washed down with a dipper of tea, which 
finished up the midnight meal on the headworks, 
on some dark, rainy night. 

The wangan tent, which was where the men 
slept when ashore, was a long, open tent, with 
two or three fires in front; and how good it 
seemed to crawl under that camp spread ; and, 
whenever we got the chance, we were always 
ready to sleep. While at the Dam we used 
often to get a chance to sleep in the barn, and 
pleased we used to be at this opportunity; and 
what sweet sleep has come to me on that old 
haymow ! 

Dan Quimby was one of the most noted cooks 
in the country, and also one of the most noted 
liars, when it was anything in the joke line; and 
many are the good lies he made the men swallow, 
together with his good cooking, which would 
please him immensely. One time, when we were 



82 LAKE AND FOREST 

tenting at Bemis, on the very spot where the 
camps are now, we had been putting in the day 
sleeping, when Dan appeared in front of the tent, 
apparently the maddest man there was on the job, 
saying : " Turn out, ye confounded sleepy heads. 
This is the second time I have been up here after 
ye, and the Squire's tearin' 'round and swearin' 
he'll turn every man of you off if ye don't get 
'round in better season. That sun's half an hour 
high now," he added, *'and you'd better get 
'round here and get yer grub into ye as quick as 
ye can ; " and he struck for the cook's camp, while 
we were hustling on our shoes, preparatory to 
following him to make way with the meal he had 
ready for us before going on to the logs ; and it 
was quite a while before any of us realized that it 
was within a half-hour of sunset, instead of half 
an hour after sunrise, and we were being called 
to supper before winding out for the night. 

But there was one day when neither Dan, his 
cookee, nor his wangan man felt very good- 
natured. It was near nightfall, after a cold, 
snowy day, such as we sometimes get about the 
middle of May. We had been turning logs out of 
the Bemis bog, and the cookee and wangan man 



RIVER DRIVING 83 

were bringing out our last lunch to the headworks, 
which was a considerable way from shore. One 
had the kettle of boiled salt fish and the big tea- 
pot, and the other had the large bucket of bread 
on one arm, a bucket of other eatables and dishes 
on the other, and the pint dippers on a string over 
his shoulder. They were both quite heavy men, 
and the luncheon they carried added to their 
weight ; and in crossing the logs, though both 
were quite good on them, they got a little too 
near together, which caused the logs to roll 
around a good deal, making it uncertain footing, 
so that they both began to hurry. The more 
they hurried, the more the logs went up and 
down. Keeping nearly abreast, they both made 
a rush for the boom ; but when they got to the 
outside of the logs, the boom had swung away 
about six feet. Both made a jump for it at the 
same time, but one did not quite reach it, and 
punched quite a respectable hole in the water, 
shutting the door after him, and taking his part 
of the luncheon with him ; while the other struck 
the boom square-footed, but was under too much 
headway to stop, and made his length, together 
with his half of the luncheon, on the other side. 



84 LAKE AND FOREST 

Though Dan used some very choice language in 
expressing his opinion of such a ''landlubber 
crew," he hustled, and soon had another baker 
sheet down on each side of the fire, and this time 
we had a chance to go ashore for our luncheon. 
The Squire usually took charge of one of the 
booms, and was seldom ever away from the 
headworks, either night or day, when we were 
at work ; and although he did not wind with the 
men all of the time, he wanted to be there, as 
he realized the value of his experience on the 
lakes. How many times, at night, I have seen 
him, with a rubber blanket tied at the neck and 
hanging loosely about him, sitting, dozing, with 
his back against a coil of rope, occasionally 
brightening up and looking at the sky and some 
point on the shore, noting what progress the boom 
was making, and generally advising us which 
way to throw the anchor. Whenever the wind 
clouds would show themselves in the sky, the 
Squire would rise and take a hand on a bar, 
causing the capstan to give an extra groan as 
he braced his powerful frame against the bar. 
As the wind freshened, and the chances of a 
shore hold became doubtful, he would stimulate 



RIVER DRIVING 85 

the men to their efforts on the bars by shouting, 
*' Give her H-He-Huldah, boys, give her Hul- 
dah ! " which was as near swearing as he ever 
came, even under the most trying circumstances. 
The Upper Dam was the objective point for 
the logs, and here the boom was cut and the 
logs singled out and run through the sluice, the 
boom stuff being sent through ahead and strung 
at the mouth of the river in Richardson Lake, 
to receive the logs again. Before this was done 
a bateau and one set of headworks were run 
with which to string the boom. The boatmen 
had a chance to show their skill in handhng a 
boat through the sluice, which tried the courage 
of the new ones ; and some of the old ones would 
look a little white " around the gills " as they 
pointed their boat into the sluice. Generally it 
was run with two midshipmen, besides the two 
boatmen, but sometimes four. Although it was 
a straight run, with no rocks in the way, yet it 
was a wild place, as the water from the long, 
steep sluice made boil after boil below, through 
which the boat would plunge, covering both 
boatmen and midshipmen with spray, and often 
shipping a great deal of water. 



86 LAKE AND FOREST 

A chance to run the sluice was much talked 
about by the green hands before the booms 
reached Upper Dam, but one look was often all 
they wanted, and they were ready to give up 
their place to some one else. I remember once 
making the seventh man in one of the boats, 
having begged the chance to go after they were 
all ready to push off; and it came near being 
the last run for all of us, as the boat was over- 
loaded. Instead of rising the boil, the boat went 
straight through, filling nearly full of water, be- 
coming unmanageable, and it was only kept from 
going under a side jam by the efforts of the 
bowman, who, as the boat neared the jam, which, 
if she struck, she would surely have been sucked 
under, shipped his paddle, leaped to the logs, 
threw his shoulder against the bow, and with a 
few long steps carried the boat safely by, and, 
still firmly grasping the bow, swung himself back 
into the boat, caught his paddle, and we went 
ploughing on down the stream. 

The sluice, when there was a full head of 
water on, was a wild-looking place, but fortu- 
nately nothing serious ever happened there, al- 
though, in running the sluice, and in towing the 



RIVER DRIVING ^y 

logs from the eddies below, there were some 
narrow escapes. I remember one time in par- 
ticular seeing a boat with a full crew start 
to run the sluice. The bowman not giving the 
order to ship their oars when they should, they 
came flying down to the head of the sluice with 
four oars on, which, with the current, gave them 
tremendous headway. As it often happened 
when there was a full head of water on, the 
bow of the boat had to be crowded down to go 
under the stringer of the bridge, and the bow- 
man clapped his paddle over the bow, as was 
the usual way to press it down, but, owing to 
the speed they were going, she was carrying an 
uncommonly high bow. The bowman had to 
work so quickly and being considerably excited, 
he did not get his paddle fair on the bow, and 
it sHpped to one side, allowing the sharp point 
of the bow to strike fair, and to embed itself in 
the stringer, the jar throwing the bowman down, 
and knocking the four midshipmen backward 
off their seats. " Old Nelse," as he was called 
by the men, the sternman, was the only man who 
did not seem to be taken by surprise. Throw- 
ing his right foot well forward, his body inclined 



88 LAKE AND FOREST 

backward, with stiff ankles and half-doubled knees, 
he prepared for the shock, which hardly jarred 
him. The least swing of the stern of the boat 
meant death to the six men; but ** Old Nelse" 
stood solid as a rock, with his eye on the bow 
of the boat, h^is hands well apart on the strong 
paddle, which he held close to him, working it 
continually, but hardly perceptibly, not allowing 
the stern of the boat to waver a hair's breadth. 
It was minutes before cantdogs could be got 
and the bow of the boat pried down, when she 
shot through the sluice, with many a " hurrah " 
for " Old Nelse," from the boys who had 
gathered around. 

A few years after I left river driving, I had 
a bateau of my own and used to take sportsmen 
through the sluice. I once took two ladies 
through, who were the only ladies to ever run 
the sluice ; but the march of improvements de- 
stroyed the old Upper Dam sluice more than 
twenty years ago, and spoiled my fun and the 
lucrative business I was doing in this line, and 
put an end to what would have been the 
"shoot the chutes" of the country. 

After the logs had been turned through the 



RIVER DRIVING 89 

Upper Dam sluice and wound across Richardson 
Lake, they were turned through Middle Dam 
into Rapid River, where there was three-quarters 
of a mile of rapid water to the Pond-in-the-River, 
about a mile long and a mile wide in the widest 
place, and the logs were usually taken across 
the pond by "sweeping" it. This was done by 
a boom strung clear across the pond, with a set 
of headworks attached to each end, the anchors 
being carried ahead the whole length of the 
line, and thrown near the shore, the men push- 
ing the logs out from the shore as the head- 
works were wound along, the boom holding 
them, and if we did not get a head wind, we 
made a quick job of sweeping the pond. At 
the outlet a trip boom was strung across to con- 
trol the logs in turning out, and in case of a 
jam below, we could shut them off altogether. 

Then the logs were again turned into the 
river, which was a stretch of rapid water for 
three miles, Smooth Ledge Pitch and the 
Devil's Hop Yard being the worst places. The 
Devil's Hop Yard was well named, for it was 
not only a wicked name, but it was wicked water, 
and a succession of large rocks and heavy swells, 



90 LAKE AND FOREST 

one after another, for half a mile. On this river 
was some of the wildest water, and if we got 
by Forest Lodge rips and the head of the 
island without a jam clear across the river, we 
were lucky. We often had very bad jams which 
we worked on days and even weeks with cant- 
dogs, and many a river driver has distinguished 
himself here, and gained his title of being a 
*' catty man," and a "bubble-walker." 

Only the best of boatmen were allowed to run 
Rapid River, or the Five Mile Falls, as it was 
often spoken of, and they usually took but one 
man with them to help trim the boat, by sitting 
near the stern and working an oar in places to 
assist the boatmen. I remember one green man 
on the drive, who was always bragging of his 
courage, declaring that no water was ever rough 
enough to frighten him, and continually begging 
the boatmen for a chance to run the falls, which 
they finally granted, knowing that he would get 
enough of it; and he did, for before they got 
through the Devil's Hop Yard the boat was nearly 
full of water, and the boatmen realized that she 
must be lightened. Accordingly they swung her 
on to the shore by the help of a friendly eddy. 



RIVER DRIVING 91 

When the boat struck the shore, she tipped up, 
spilling half the water out of her, and Mr. Blow- 
hard scrambed over the side, as scared and as 
pleased a man as ever stood on terra firma. After 
the water was bailed out with a paddle, and she 
was ready for a start, the bowman said, " Come, 
get in." He took a few steps toward the boat, 
then, looking up, said, " See here, if it don't make 
any particular difference to you fellows, I — I — I 
don't believe but I'll travel the rest of the way." 

It was thought for years after logs began to be 
driven over the Five Mile Falls that only Bangor 
boatmen could handle on the falls, and make the 
run through from the Pond-in-the-River to the 
" Cedar Stump " ; but as the Rangeley boatmen got 
more experienced on the lakes and smaller falls, 
some of them developed into as good "white 
water " boatmen as the East River men, and be- 
gan to run the falls whenever their turn came. 

Probably Maine never had better boatmen than 
Joe Carey and 'Lisha Bedill, "Uncle Lish," as he 
was called, who were men with the experience of 
at least forty springs in rough-water handling, and 
who came from the Penobscot and the lower 
Androscoggin to help over the falls. They were 



92 LAKE AND FOREST 

a well-matched pair. " Uncle Lish," who handled 
the stern, was a man of over 200 pounds weight, 
and with the strength of two ordinary men, and the 
way he could throw his weight on to a paddle or 
setting pole, when dropping in rapid water, was 
marvellous ; while Joe, who handled the bow, would 
not tip the scales at over 135 or 140 pounds, but 
was *' smart as a weasel," although he was a man 
well along in years, as well as Uncle Lish. How 
many times I have seen him, standing carelessly in 
the bow, swaying his lithe form to catch his bal- 
ance as the boat rose or plunged in the swift 
water, smoking his short-stemmed brier pipe as un- 
concernedly as though standing on the shore, and 
taking the precaution to turn it bowl down before 
the boat would take a plunge where the water was 
sure to fly. But, like all other men, Joe one day 
made a mistake, when running the falls just above 
Smooth Ledge Pitch, in not striking a boil far 
enough away from a rock, and his bow was sent 
on to the rock instead of away from it. Joe 
shipped his paddle, jumped to the rock, and seized 
the bow, preventing it from striking hard, when 
the stern began to swing. Finding that he could 
not hold the boat, and not caring to go over 



RIVER DRIVING 93 

Smooth Ledge Pitch in a bateau stern first, he 
sang out to Uncle Lish to jump, which he might 
have done as the boat swung around, and made 
the shore without much of a wetting ; but as Uncle 
Lish said afterward, he had held down the stern 
of a boat for forty years, and never jumped in 
time of danger, and he was getting to be too old 
a man to jump then. 

Joe, realizing the danger in trying to make the 
eddy below Smooth Ledge, decided to remain on the 
rock, and when he could hold the boat no longer, 
let go ; and Uncle Lish went on his way alone, with 
the boat half-full of water, and the stern down- 
river. He threw his mighty weight and strength 
on to the old rock-maple paddle till it bent like a 
sapling, and succeeded in swinging the boat, and 
running her near enough the upper end of Smooth 
Ledge, which was a gradual rise from where it left 
the water back some rods, for a man who was 
standing on the ledge to jump in, and called for 
Joe to do so ; but he, thinking the ledge far the 
safer place, declined. Though Uncle Lish again 
might have jumped ashore dry shod, he did not 
embrace the opportunity, but instead rushed to the 
bow of the boat, and worked with all his might to 



94 LAKE AND FOREST 

throw her into the eddy, but owing to the strong 
cross-current made by the ledge, it was a difficult 
task for one man to do this alone in a thirty-five- 
foot bateau. 

Dave Haley, a Rangeley boatman, and his 
sternman had just made the run, and were resting 
on their paddles in the eddy. Seeing Uncle Lish 
coming alone, it flashed across Dave's mind the 
danger he was in, as knowing the set of the 
water so well, he realized it would be next to an 
impossibility for Uncle Lish to make the eddy, 
and that the strong current would prove too much 
for him, with all his muscle and science with the 
paddle, and carry him behind the island, where 
he knew was a jam under which the boat would 
be swept. He called to his sternman to give 
headway, and their boat almost flew to the ledge, 
upon which Dave leaped, and going down at full 
speed he reached the water's edge just as Uncle 
Lish's boat went shooting by the lower end of 
the ledge, though a good fifteen feet away. With- 
out hesitating he made a spring and landed in 
her all right, and after a hard fight they worked 
the boat, now nearly full of water, into the eddy 
below Smooth Ledge. 



RIVER DRIVING 95 

The men all said it was the first time they had 
ever seen Uncle Lish any "white around the 
gills," and he allowed that he was never gladder 
to see a pair of calked boots strike the bottom 
board of the old " bat," than he was to see " little 
Dave's." 

From the river the logs found the boom again 
at the head of Umbagog Lake, and four miles 
of wind took them across the lake to the outlet, 
the head of the Androscoggin River. Both the 
weather and the water used to get very warm 
before the wind across Umbagog Lake, which 
would be from the middle to the last of June. 
The Umbagog, being a low, marshy lake, was a 
paradise for frogs ; and no one who has never 
been on that lake on a calm, pleasant summer 
night can have any idea of the sound that can 
be sent forth by three or four square miles of 
able-bodied and well-developed bullfrogs. And 
the " Umbagog band," as we called them, has a 
reputation among river drivers of being second 
to none in the state. For no matter how loud 
the capstan squeaked and groaned on account 
of the well-worn *' pork rind jewel," its complaint 
was lost in the chorus of the " Umbagog band." 



96 LAKE AND FOREST 

It was four miles of dead water to Errol Dam, 
where the logs were again sluiced and left in 
a wide place in the river just below the dam, 
called Bragg's Bay, or at Milan Boom, some miles 
below. Here we were paid off and started for 
our several homes, often hiring teams and mak- 
ing up parties of six or eight; and it was then 
that if the boys had any weakness for "split" 
or any hilarity it was likely to develop. It was 
sometimes lively work for those who did not in- 
dulge in '* split " to look after the ones who 
" split it " too often, and keep them within bounds ; 
for they felt very friendly and very well ac- 
quainted with the neighbors all along the way, 
and would generally insist on going in the front 
door and going all through the house. If they 
passed a schoolhouse they were especially inter- 
ested, as they had a great respect for '' knowledge 
boxes," and were very anxious to visit them, 
much to the consternation of the schoolma'am and 
her flock. It was on one of these rides that a 
party of us called at a farmhouse late at night, 
and asked for a chance to put up, which the peo- 
ple were kind enough to grant. In the room 
which was assigned to three of us was a large 



RIVER DRIVING 97 

and a small bed. Being told that the ''two men 
could sleep in the big bed, and the little feller in 
the trundle bed," — "the Trapper, if you please," 
said one of my companions ; " and see here, the 
Trapper and I have slept together on the ground 
for the past seventy nights, and we don't intend 
to be separated the last night we shall be to- 
gether ; and if it don't make any difference to you 
we will both sleep in the trundle bed, and if it 
does make any difference to you we will both 
sleep in the trundle bed." I have remembrances 
of hearing my companion up in the night, " splicing 
out the bed," as he said, with a chair ; but in the 
morning we were both in the trundle bed, I for 
one having passed a very comfortable night. 



CHAPTER VI 

ON A DIFFERENT TACK 

WHEN I had left the drive this time I 
had promised Mr. Toothaker that I 
would go to Phillips and locate with 
him; and so accordingly, after a few days in 
Andover, I shouldered my " Kennebecker," and 
took the road through Byron and Number Six, 
and on to Phillips. I found Mr. Toothaker and 
his family very pleasant, and the following day, 
being Sunday, went to church with them, and 
passed the afternoon in walking with the Squire 
about the pretty village of PhilHps, and over his 
fine farm ; and hearing him talking with some men 
about his starting them for the woods at the lakes 
the next morning, was very anxious to join them, 
as some of them were men I had been in the 
woods with. But the Squire would not hear of 
this, saying I had come to Phillips to live, and he 
wanted me to stay with him and begin to go to 

98 




The "Oozalluc " 
The " Wm. P. Frye 



ON A DIFFERENT TACK 99 

school. This was the only difference of opinion 
we had, but I went to sleep that night thinking 
over the situation, and realized that if I stayed 
there my days of doing just as I had a mind 
to were over, and woke up still with the spirit of 
freedom and unrestraint about me, and I rose and 
dressed and again packed my " Kennebecker " ; 
and after breakfast, just before time for the 
Phillips and Farmington stage to leave, made my 
appearance downstairs, grip in hand. The Squire 
was much surprised, and wanted to know "what 
on earth this meant." I told him I was very 
sorry, but had decided not to stay any longer; 
and while he was forcibly expressing his opinion 
of the uncertainties and downward course of 
young men, I was expressing my regrets and 
backing toward the outside door, which, with my 
most polite bow, I soon had closed between my 
kind would-be benefactor and myself, and hurried 
for the Barden House, to board the stage for 
Farmington. 

I had had a letter from a young man of my 
acquaintance in Salem not long before this, telling 
me of the openings there were for work in Massa- 
chusetts, and I decided to try my luck in that 

fLoFC. 



100 LAKE AND FOREST 

direction. So at Farmington I bought a ticket 
for Salem, and the next day found my acquaint- 
ance, who worked in a shoe shop in Lynn, and 
went there the next morning and walked the 
whole town over looking for some kind of work, 
with but little success, being told many times that 
no boys were wanted ; and my plea that I was no 
boy, but able to do a man's work, did no good, 
and ;^4.oo a week was the best I could get, the 
work being to sweep up a machine room where 
there were fifteen girls, and take the welts out of 
women's shoes, which was somewhat different 
from handling an axe in the logging swamp, or a 
cantdog on the drive, I thought. But this was the 
best I could do, and I decided to try it, with the 
promise before me that there would be something 
better for me when business came up. Earning 
$4.00 a week and paying $5.25 for board was 
making money the wrong way, and I decided to 
move on to Boston, which I did. I was told to 
buy a Herald and look in the columns of Help 
Wanted. I bought the Herald and walked down 
every job that was held forth in Boston, Charles- 
town, and Cambridge, the only thing I found 
worth considering being ^5.00 a week in a fish 



ON A DIFFERENT TACK loi 

market in the South End, and ^6.00 a week in 
a picture-frame factory in Cambridgeport. The 
latter, I decided to try; but as the engine broke 
down on my second day there, and I would have 
to lose my time till it was repaired, with ;^4.oo a 
week for meals and with $2.00 a week for a room 
staring me in the face, I again began the hunt for 
another job. 

One of the places I tried was Page's box fac- 
tory, and was told there was no work in the mill 
for me. I then interceded for a job in the yard, 
handling lumber, as I saw quite a crew at work 
there, and was told there might be a chance 
there ; and, on inquiring what the pay would be, 
they told me if I could lug as much lumber as 
the '' Irishmen and niggers," they would pay me 
the same as they did them. This was the next 
job I tackled, and could soon balance a load of 
boards on my shoulder with my hand on my hip, 
and found no difficulty in carrying as large a load 
as any of them, and found my companions good 
fellows to work with, soon making friends with 
them all. The Irishmen and darkies worked in 
separate crews, and I often found myself work- 
ing with the negroes, when some Irish friend 



102 LAKE AND FOREST 

would seize me by the arm, saying, *' Oh, come 
along with us ; don't go off there with the black 
men. We'll make a Cork man of you." When 
Saturday night came and the men were paid off, 
I was given $9.00 a week, the same as the 
others, which pleased me very much, and I con- 
tinued the work, but early the following week 
received my first promotion, which, although it 
was not a call to a soft snap in the office, was 
an election to the chip hole in the basement of 
the mill, and was considered a notch above the 
yard, as it was an inside job. My work, with an- 
other young man, was to clear away the edgings 
as they came down from the saws and pile them 
into large baskets, carry them up a flight of stairs 
on our backs, and pack on to a wagon where they 
were distributed about the town, selling at two 
dollars a load. 

Although I liked the outdoor work better, I 
kept this job for a couple of weeks, when I was 
invited up on to the floor above and instructed 
how to run a light planer. This promotion I was 
much pleased with ; but after a week or two I 
was again taken up another flight and instructed 
how to run a circular saw in getting out the 



ON A DIFFERENT TACK 103 

boards for boxes. This job pleased me best 
of all, as I liked the work ; and they soon raised 
my pay another dollar. As I was allowed to 
help nail boxes by the piece evenings, I saw the 
chance of getting a little money ahead. I tried 
hard to pile up a little in the Main Street Sav- 
ings-bank, but I found it slow work, and a vaca- 
tion of two weeks at my Andover home, the 
following summer, took about all my money, and 
brought back to me all my old love for the 
woods and waters. I worked but a few days 
after returning, when I could stand it no longer, 
and on reporting to the office that I desired to 
settle up, and being asked what the trouble 
was, my excuse was that I was sick, which was 
true, as I was sick at heart, working under cover, 
with my mind far away in the woods and waters 
of the lakes. When the pleasant bookkeeper 
paid me the small amount there was coming to 
me, he suggested that I probably had a severe 
case of " home fever." Possibly my looks and 
actions reminded him of some cases he had 
seen. 

For many reasons I was sorry to leave Cam- 
bridge, for I had made some good friends there. 



I04 LAKE AND FOREST 

both in the factory and about town. I had not 
been in the place long, when, one Sunday evening, 
in going past a church of which the door was 
partially open, I heard the sound of many happy 
voices : — 

" We are going home in the good old way, 
It's the good old way, by our fathers trod, 
'Tis the only way, and it leadeth unto God. 
It's the only way to the realms of day ; 
We are going home in the good old way." 

How good that sounded, and how it carried me 
back to the young people who gathered at the 
Sunday evening concerts in the little church at 
Andover Corner ; and, after walking past the 
church a little way, I retraced my steps, and went 
in, and was shown to a seat by a pleasant gentle- 
man. As soon as the services were over, the 
minister came to me and shook hands, inquired 
my name, and introduced me to a number of the 
people, both old and young, all of whom were 
very pleasant ; and I left there that night with a 
cordial invitation to come again and to attend their 
sociables, and a feeling within me that it was 
not such a cold, hard world, after all, as many 



ON A DIFFERENT TACK 105 

people claimed it to be. During my stay there 
I passed some very pleasant Sunday evenings 
with the people of the Broadway Baptist church, 
and still remember pleasant Mr. Hinckley and 
many of his congregation. 



CHAPTER VII 

BACK TO THE WOODS 

I WAS soon on the Boston boat, headed for 
"Down East," in company with another 
young man afflicted with about the same 
trouble that I was. Soon after leaving Portland 
on the Grand Trunk road, a pleasant-looking 
man who occupied the seat behind us struck up 
a conversation, and asked us which way we were 
headed, and if we wanted any chances to work ; 
and although I had it in mind to go to Andover 
and start for the lakes trapping, the dollar a 
day and found that he offered was rather tempt- 
ing, and as the other young man was much in 
favor of going, after consideration I decided to 
take up with his offer. He wanted to hire me 
to cook for a crew, and the other man to use 
an axe, and although I told him I did not know 
anything about cooking, he said the crew was 
small, and promised that the man then cooking 

1 06 



BACK TO THE WOODS 107 

would stay and help me till he got me well 
started. Under these conditions we promised 
to start from Andover the next morning for the 
upper Magalloway settlement, at which place his 
crew was at work. 

Accordingly the next morning we shouldered 
our packs and started for our new jobs, footing 
it the first day to Errol Dam, a distance of 
twenty-five miles, which might be considered a 
fair day's work for sick men ; but the fields and 
woods scenery was the tonic that we needed. 
The next day, early in the afternoon, we arrived 
at the old deserted house at Wilson's Mill where 
the men were camping. Mr. Mailing, our em- 
ployer, had sent word that a cook was coming, 
and as soon as the dishes were washed after 
supper, the cook threw the dishcloth at me and 
said he was done ; and although I told him I 
was no cook, and Mr. Mailing had promised that 
he would cook till he got me well started, he 
positively refused to help me get breakfast the 
next morning. 

I realized that I was in for a difficult job, 
and told the men that I did not know enough 
about cooking to boil water without burning it, 



I08 LAKE AND FOREST 

but if they were willing to stand it I would give 
it a try, and do the best I could. The boss, who 
seemed to be a kind-hearted man and who stood 
six feet four in his stockings, was an *' East 
River" (Penobscot) man, as well as the rest of 
the crew. He said that they would risk it, and 
that he thought I would pull through all right, 
and if I did not poison them all with nastiness 
inside of a week, I would do as well as the other 
fellow did. 

I struck many matches in the night to look at 
my watch to be sure not to oversleep, and at 
four o'clock crept from our field bed on the 
floor, where we all slept, and built a fire pre- 
paratory to getting breakfast for the crew. Boil- 
ing potatoes and frying salt pork was easy 
enough ; but making biscuit out of sour dough 
was the sticker, and I guessed as near as I 
could to the amount of soda I had seen cooks 
use in the woods, regardless of not knowing how 
sour the dough was. Throwing in some salt and 
putting in some pork fat for shortening, as luck 
would have it I had fair success with my first 
batch of biscuit, and these, with the beans the 
other cook had left, which I warmed up, and 



BACK TO THE WOODS 



109 



some tea, made a breakfast that the men de- 
clared was an improvement over what they had 
been having. 

This encouraged me to launch beyond my 
depth, and after breakfast and the dishes washed, 
I struck in to make my first batch of doughnuts. 
I had to guess at everything, — what to put in, 
how to mix them up, and how hot to get the fat. 
I thought I would fry them in a large fry-pan, 
and accordingly filled it about half full of lard. 
When I thought the fat was hot enough, I cut 
out something I thought would be a doughnut, 
and dropped it in, waiting for its appearance as I 
had seen doughnuts rise; but neither bubbles nor 
doughnut made an appearance for some time, and 
when the doughnut did, I noticed that the fat was 
disappearing. When I lifted it from the bot- 
tom, where it struck when I dropped it in, about 
all the fat there was in the pan came with it. 
Thinking it would be a pity to throw away so much 
good lard, I laid it away carefully on a plate in the 
cupboard, and when I came to squeeze the fat 
out of it, I had enough to shorten three or four 
batches of biscuit. I put some more lard in the 
pan, this time getting it hotter, and after a while 



no LAKE AND FOREST 

had a pan full of something which could be called 
doughnuts, if a man's imagination were elastic 
enough. But I kept trying, and after a while 
the men allowed that I was making a very fair 
cook. 

One of my duties as soon as I got up in the 
morning was to call the teamster. I always had 
a constant dread of not waking up early enough 
to have breakfast ready for the crew at daylight, 
and one morning, on looking at my watch with 
sleepy eyes, I decided that I had overslept. I 
grabbed the teamster by the shoulder, giving 
him a good shake, whispering, " Hustle, Albion, 
hustle, I've overslept," which he at once did. 
While I was piling the shavings and fine wood 
into the stove, Albion jumped to his feet, clapped 
his hat on his head, gave one hitch to his pants, 
with one tuck, fore and aft, kicked one foot, 
then the other, shoved his feet into his loosely 
fitting cowhides, and with his frock on his arm 
shot through the outside door, throwing his only 
and port-side suspender into place with his left 
hand, and with his right lighting his pipe, which 
he "always loaded over night" and was in his 
mouth as soon as he struck the floor, with the 



BACK TO THE WOODS in 

same match with which he had Hghted his lan- 
tern. 

I had the stove red-hot, the potatoes boih'hg, 
the biscuit in the oven, and was just going to 
turn the men out when Albion came panting 
back, for the barn where the cattle were kept 
was fully a quarter of a mile away. " I wish 
you'd take another look at that turnip o' yours," 
said he, " for them critters had hardly laid down ; " 
and on looking at my watch again, I was horri- 
fied to find that it was not quite twelve o'clock. 
Albion, instead of being provoked at my sending 
him off on his midnight trip, gave me a poke 
in the ribs, and nearly doubled himself up in 
convulsive laughter, smothering it as much as 
he could so as not to wake the men who were 
asleep in an adjoining room, and was soon turned 
in for the rest of the night; while I decided to 
sit up and finish baking the bread and boiling 
the potatoes, and contented myself with taking 
a nap beside the stove. 

The watch that I carried that fall was an old- 
fashioned, silver, hunting-case watch. In looking 
at it so many times each night with sleepy eyes, 
I had struck the lighted match before the brim- 



112 LAKE AND FOREST 

stone had burned off against the inside of the 
case, till it did not have much resemblance to a 
silver watchcase. 

After spending a few weeks in the old house, 
we were obliged to move four miles up the brook 
into the woods, where we built a shed-roof camp 
of small logs, leaving one side open, in front of 
which we kept a good log fire, by which I had 
to do the cooking, baking my bread in an old- 
fashioned tin baker, doing my boiling and frying 
on top of the fire, and with the bean hole at one 
side of the fire. As I had no iron bean pot I 
used a cast-iron teakettle, putting a pine plug 
in the nose to keep the ashes out, which the 
steam from the beans prevented from burning 
out during the several weeks I used it. The 
bean hole I put more work in than is usually 
done, digging out a large hole and then stoning 
it, leaving it round like a well, making it about 
two feet deep and a foot wider than the kettle. 
In this I would build a fire early in the day by 
putting dry wood at the bottom, piling coarse 
wood on top quite a distance above the hole, so 
when it burned down I would have the hole 
nearly full of nice coals. I would shovel a part 



BACK TO THE WOODS 113 

of these out, and set my teakettle of beans into 
the hole and pile the coals in around the sides, 
covering the kettle over eight or ten inches deep 
with hot ashes. The rocks, which had been well 
heated through by the fire, aided the coals in 
keeping the bean hole hot ; and the next morning 
the beans would come out in prime condition. 

My quarters where I kept my cooking things 
was a tent which stood a little way from the fire ; 
and as we stayed till well along into December, it 
was somewhat airy at five o'clock in the morning 
to get one's hands into flour and knead up sour- 
dough bread. There were also many other things 
about outdoor cooking at this time of year that 
I did not find pleasant. While cooking dough- 
nuts one day, after a heavy snowstorm, keeping 
the kettle covered to keep out the snow, when I 
lifted the cover, preparatory to tossing in a dough- 
nut, a lump of snow as big as my head fell from 
the limb of a tree, striking the cover, quite a 
quantity going into the fat, making it fly in all 
directions, and setting the whole thing afire ; and 
I had a lively time with a picaroon in getting 
the blazing kettle from the fire. Another incon- 
venience I experienced in this outdoor cooking 



114 LAKE AND FOREST 

was after a heavy rain, soon after we had moved 
up here, waking up in the morning and finding 
that the brook near the camp had dammed up 
and turned its course by the camp, running 
directly across the fire bed, washing out every 
spark, and drowning the bean hole, which wasn't 
a very pleasant predicament to face in getting 
a daylight breakfast ready for ten men. But 
there was always a way out of these predica- 
ments, by commencing a little earlier and by add- 
ing a little more work; and in this case it was 
hunting for dry wood in the darkness, and chop- 
ping and splitting it up in the rain and snow. 
Many times since this, in my experience in employ- 
ing cooks, when I have had them explain to me 
the impossibilities of an early breakfast or some- 
thing which required a little extra exertion, I have 
kept my mouth shut and secretly wished them in 
no hotter place than to have to turn out two hours 
before daylight, some December morning, in a 
combination rain and snow storm, and find both 
fire bed and bean hole drowned by a mountain 
brook pouring over them, and a crew of men to 
get breakfast for. 




111 
111 

to 
o 

H 
H 

o 



CHAPTER VIII 

ON THE MAGALLOWAY DRIVE 

IT was the middle of December before our job 
was finished and we struck for the settlement, 
and on weighing myself, found much to my 
gratification that I weighed 117 pounds. Although 
I was twenty-one years old, a month and a half 
before, when I left Massachusetts, I weighed but 
90 pounds, having grown but little in the last five 
or six years before, although I had been perfectly 
well, with the exception of some headaches and a 
light run of the measles. The hearty food which 
I was obliged to eat in the logging swamp and on 
the drive, in order to keep up steam, gave me a sick 
headache occasionally, and caused me to creep 
from the berth many times through the night 
and make futile attempts at parting with every- 
thing, seemingly clear to my boots. My remedy 
for this was plenty of warm water for my stomach 
to have something to work on, and after a while 

"5 



Il6 LAKE AND FOREST 

I would fall asleep, waking up in the morning 
feeling like a new man, and after a dipper of tea 
and a light breakfast, I would feel so good I 
could hardly stay on the ground. The logging 
swamp fare of pork and beans, hot saleratus bis- 
cuits and Yankee butter, which was pork fat and 
molasses mixed together, was a little harsh for 
my stomach before it got educated to take care 
of anything that could be got below the shirt 
collar. The Andover doctor attributed the cause 
of my not growing to the many baths taken in 
the cold waters of the Andover brooks when I 
was young. Giving me a start in growing was 
not the only thing my Massachusetts trip did for 
me, for I have never had a sick headache since 
I went there. I continued to grow, and before 
I was twenty-three I went up to 140 pounds. 

The remainder of the winter I put in in a fish- 
ing trip through the ice on Richardson Lake, and 
in the logging swamp on The Diamond, and the 
following spring took up river driving again, 
thinking, perhaps, that the old adage, " Once 
a lumberman, always a lumberman," was going 
to prove true in my case. And I was satisfied 
to have it so, as I never had done any work 



ON THE MAGALLOWAY DRIVE 117 

I liked better ; for though the work was hard 
and the days long, yet I was Hght and well 
adapted to it, and it meant from $2.75 to $3.50 a 
day. I was made happy when the drive was in 
and I was being paid off, on being told by the boss 
that I was the only man on the drive who had 
not lost time ; and the following spring there was 
only one other who had no lost time charged to 
him. 

But a few years later I worked out of it 
almost unconsciously, for I had been guiding, 
summers after the drive was in, and found it a 
lucrative business; and soon early parties began 
to interfere with the business of the drive. Shortly 
after I dropped out of river driving altogether; 
but my river-driving days are remembered with 
pleasure, although some of them were days and 
nights of hardship. Turning in at night under 
a heavy camp spread with thirty or forty men, 
perhaps with wet clothes on ; coming out in the 
morning with a feeling of being parboiled ; pull- 
ing on wet stockings that had been wrung out 
the night before and placed in our bootlegs 
under our heads, for this, experience had taught 
us, was the best preventive for sore feet ; eat- 



Il8 LAKE AND FOREST 

ing our breakfast while the early spring days 
were breaking, which at that time of year meant 
before four o'clock, standing up before the open 
fire, warming first one side and then the other ; 
and hobbling away to the logs in the gray of 
the morning, perhaps wading through ice and 
water for rods to get on to them, feeling every 
joint in our bodies, — but as soon as our cantdogs 
would begin to rattle and the loosened logs go 
plunging down the stream, we would limber up, 
and forget we ever felt a sore spot. There were 
some exciting and pleasant incidents as well as 
some sad and hard ones. 

An experience which came near being fatal 
to one of our brother river drivers occurred one 
spring on the C Pond drive, the upper part 
of which was a dead-water drive, a dam having 
been built some four miles down the stream 
below the pond. This dam, raising the water 
a number of feet, had flooded the flat land in 
some places half a mile or more from each 
bank, which was wooded with fir and spruce 
and small growth. Our camp stood on a knoll, 
perhaps a mile below the pond, and was almost 
surrounded by water, and between our camp and 



ON THE MAGALLOWAY DRIVE 119 

work the only mode of conveyance was by a 
log, or in a bateau. As the bateau was not 
generally available, a log was what we com- 
monly used. Our work was mostly on the logs, 
often going on them in the morning and not 
going off till night, eating our luncheon by pull- 
ing a glut of logs together and sticking our pick 
in the outside one, and holding them together by 
sitting down on the pole. 

One night it was growing quite dark as we 
were returning to camp, when somebody thought 
they heard a man halloo down the stream. Three 
of us poled down that way to make sure, two 
on one log and one on another. We soon heard 
the noise again, and decided it was a man ; and 
we began to answer him, working our logs down 
the stream as fast as possible, till we came oppo- 
site where the voice came from, when we headed 
our logs into the woods, and began to work 
them through till we came to dry land, which 
proved to be a high knoll. One of the men stayed 
with the logs to " holler " us back, while two 
of us hurried over the ground, keeping our hands 
in front of our eyes as we went, as it was get- 
ting quite dark, till we came to water on the 



120 LAKE AND FOREST 

other side. We could hear some one splashing 
through the water, occasionally falling, but keep- 
ing up a continual whoop, but which hardly 
sounded like a human voice. We commenced to 
call to him to come toward us, but it was some 
little time before we could get him to come 
direct to the knoll. But when he did get to 
us, we found it to be one of our fellow-work- 
men who had been to his home in Upton, and 
returning, realizing that night was overtaking 
him when he left the dam, he hurried along on 
the high land, until he thought he was opposite 
the camp, when he had waded into the water, 
and was soon bewildered after wading in water 
to his shoulders and having no idea which way 
to go. He was a very grateful and much-pleased 
man, when an hour later he was warmed up 
and had dry clothes on in the camp. If we had 
been in camp a few minutes earlier, we should 
not have heard his voice, and there is little possi- 
bility that the following morning would have 
seen him alive. 

We had one of those sad experiences so com- 
mon on the drives, of seeing a fellow-workman 
drowned in taking a drive over Aziscoos Falls, 



'^ 



ON THE MAGALLOWAY DRIVE 121 

which was one of the roughest pieces of water 
in the region, and which, before they had been 
improved by dynamite and a dam, was a series 
of falls, many of the pitches being from twelve 
to fifteen feet high ; and when a jam was formed 
the logs would back up over these pitches, stand- 
ing on end and in all positions. The only 
safe way to work them was by a dog warp on 
shore, the iron dog, attached to the long warp, 
being driven into the log thought to hold the jam, 
which would then be pulled from its fastness by 
the men, and as soon as it struck the water would 
go like the bullet from a gun, and the dog would 
be wrenched out by getting a turn around a tree 
with the line. Sometimes, when the snub man 
would lose his turn around the tree and the rope 
would go switching through the trees, it was lively 
work for the men to get out of the way. 

There was always more or less rivalry among 
the boats' crews, which were often made up from 
men from different sections of the country, for 
they all had their "white water" men, who had 
the reputation of staying with the jam till the 
last log was gone, and going ashore on "bubbles." 
They were usually ambitious not to let any one 



122 LAKE AND FOREST 

get ahead of them, and when two or three of them 
got together, unless called back by the boss, they 
would go where it was almost impossible to get 
back with their lives. In this crew were three 
men of this stamp, two East River men and one 
a Frenchman from Canada. It had been the 
custom for a number of years for a boat's crew 
to come from Canada, made up by a big Scotch- 
man, a good boatman and a sort of under boss. 
The year before he had had a Scotch crew of 
midshipmen, who, though good river drivers, 
found the East River men too much for them, 
and had been kept in the water a good part of 
the time, and had all come near being drowned 
by them. This spring, when making his appear- 
ance with his boat's crew, he had said to Randall, 
the chief boss, " Your East River boys won't find 
the Scotch lads this spring ; " and they didn't, 
for he had for midshipmen four Frenchmen, 
who were as good white water men as could 
be found anywhere, and one in particular who 
was a wonder. He was a man weighing about 
1 60 pounds, rather short for his weight, put to- 
gether as straight and compact as human frame 
and muscle could be. His legs seemed to be 



ON THE MAGALLOWAY DRIVE 123 

made of spring steel, and always ready to spring 
at just the right time. He seemed to have been 
born with a balance, and a pair of calked boots 
on, and no log ever turned quickly enough to 
catch him off his guard. He always had the 
same look of unconcern on his face, — whether 
creeping through the cobwork of logs on a white 
water jam, searching for the *'key," as the log 
was called which was supposed to hold the jam, 
in which to drive his dog, with the logs trembling 
all about him, seemingly all ready to break away, 
which if they did meant sure death to him ; riding 
a single log down a rocky rapid, his cantdog on 
his shoulder; or taking in dead water rear. 

It was on these falls on a May afternoon that 
we had a bad jam, and the Frenchman had shoul- 
dered his cantdog and made for the head of it, 
followed by his East River rivals. They took off 
a few of the logs without any sign of the jam 
hauling, when the call for luncheon sounded, and 
all got together on the shore. At lunch the men 
were told that it was a crazy piece of business 
for them to be out there, as if the jam hauled 
there would not be the slightest chance for their 
lives, to which the East River men replied that 



124 LAKE AND FOREST 

they knew it and would not be fools enough to go 
back; but as soon as the Frenchman swallowed 
his luncheon, he again shouldered his cantdog and 
made for the head of the jam. This was more 
than the blood of the East River men could stand, 
and they were soon with him, lifting and picking 
on the swaying logs with their cantdogs. 

Soon there was a splash as about a dozen logs at 
the head of the jam quickly gave way and went 
into the water. All three of the men went with 
them, jumping for their lives at the same time. 
Fortune favored the Frenchman and one of the 
East River men, as they kept their feet and struck 
on the logs, and made some quick running jumps 
from log to log, till they landed, one striking the 
shore, and the other near enough to be pulled out 
by his companions. But poor Jack was not so 
fortunate, for the logs went out from under him, 
and he struck the water, clasping his arms over a 
log in a desperate attempt to jump on it ; but the 
strong current was rolling the log toward him and 
his attempt was fruitless, and giving one wild and 
longing look at his companions, first on one bank 
of the river, then the other, where we all stood, 
powerless to lend a helping hand, — it was only 



ON THE MAGALLOWAY DRIVE 125 

one glance that he had time to give, — the wicked 
swells closed over him, and that was the last that 
was seen of him alive. Although we searched 
the river for rods below, and took off many a side 
jam, we could find no trace of his body. 

Poor Jack ! Not a man in the crew but felt 
that he had lost a brother, for he was everybody's 
friend, always ready to lend a helping hand in a 
hard spot, a hail-fellow-well-met, and one of the 
foremost "bubble walkers" of his time. There 
were many sad hearts in the wangan that night, 
and many went to sleep thinking of Jack ; and in 
the morning about every one had a dream to tell 
about him. It was said by those who lived near 
his home that he had a girl whom he intended to 
marry when the drive was in ; and the only relative 
he had was an uncle, who was on the drive, but 
working a short distance below at the 'time Jack 
was drowned, and who returned to search for the 
body after we got the drive in and the water on 
the falls was down to its summer pitch. He 
found the body nearly out of water, about half 
a mile below where he had been last seen. 
With the help of another man he buried it near 
by. 



126 LAKE AND FOREST 

I wonder if the girl ever thinks of her old-time 
river-driver lover, who has slept so quietly all 
these twenty-eight years, in that lonely grave, 
where the waters of the Magalloway unceasingly 
play his funeral dirge over her gigantic boulder 
keys, as they did on that sad May afternoon. 

How river driving has changed, with everything 
else, in the last twenty-five years, for nearly all the 
bad boulders have been blasted out with dynamite ; 
and when a jam does form, instead of the rattle of 
the cantdog and the cry of the men as they pull 
on the dog warp, is heard the explosion of dyna- 
mite as the logs are blown from their fastnesses, 
often being broken in two by the shock. In 
most cases a dam is made at the head of the falls, 
and when a jam is formed, the gates are shut, tak- 
ing the water away from it, when the logs can be 
worked with cantdogs with safety until a blast of 
dynamite can be put in to good advantage. Then 
the gates are hoisted, and the water carries all 
before it with a rush. 

No more the old-time bosses are found who 
would jump into the water waist deep at the head 
of the men, wading through to the logs and 
threshing the ice ahead of them with their cant- 



ON THE MAGALLOWAY DRIVE 127 

dogs, that had formed perhaps an inch thick the 
night before, as the quickest and often the only 
way of reaching the logs, and calling to the men : 
'* Come on here. What to h — 1 you fellers afraid 
of ; this won't burn ye ! " when the men with a 
rush would usually follow him, shouting that good 
men were not afraid of the water. 



CHAPTER IX 

GUIDING DAYS 

IT was three or four years after my uncere- 
monious leave-taking of Squire Toothaker 
before I saw much of him ; but one day, as 
I was seated on the plate of the Upper Dam with 
a landing net across my knees, watching the 
man I was guiding fish, he came up, and, tapping 
me on the shoulder, said : " Well, Trapper, how 
are ye ? If you had stayed with me and gone 
to school, and done as I wanted ye to, ye wouldn't 
have had to be doing this — ye wouldn't had to 
be digging worms for these city fellers." I said 
that water was plenty and the dirt washed off 
easily, and to this suggestion he replied, '' It 
don't make any difference, I wouldn't dig worms 
for no man," and went on his way to look after 
his work, leaving me feeling more or less cut 
up. But I was afterward assured that he enter- 

128 




F. C. Barker axd Johx Daxforth. 

Taken in Quebec in 1877, after a trip through the woods from the 
Rangeley Lakes. 



GUIDING DAYS 129 

tained no hard feelings toward me, as he was 
always pleasant ; and when buying my first steamr 
boat, and lacking ^170 of the required sum, I 
asked the Squire if he would sign a note for 
sixty days with me on the Phillips bank. He 
said he didn't make a practice of signing notes 
with strangers, but he thought he knew some- 
thing about me, and if I would get the note he 
would sign it. This I did, and with his indorse- 
ment drew the money, and before the time was 
out saw him at the lake, paid him the money, 
and he took up the note for me. 

I had for three or four seasons made a busi- 
ness of guiding before I bought this steamer, 
and had been financially fairly successful. Being 
an Andover boy, I naturally worked into guid- 
ing from that end of the lakes, our parties com- 
ing in on a buckboard over a rough road from 
Andover to the arm of the lake, and by row- 
boat four miles to the Middle Dam, and the 
Upper Dam, which was twelve miles. These, 
with the Greenvale House at the head of Range- 
ley Lake, and the Umbagog and Lake House at 
Upton, were the only public stopping-places on 
the whole chain of lakes. Although the Upper 



130 LAKE AND FOREST 

Dam was not really a public camp, yet they gen- 
erally accommodated what few fishermen came 
along. 

I made money in guiding in those days, as 
there were generally extras to be had if one was 
looking for them ; and many a time at night I 
have taken my boat and rowed from the Upper 
Dam to Indian Rock, or the South Arm, for some 
article that had been forgotten, or perhaps for 
some boat that had been left, making three or 
five dollars by my night's work, getting back in 
season for a day's work, but often not in time 
for even a cat-nap. Quite often we would make 
double headers, getting a day's pay for rowing 
a party from the Upper Dam to the arm of the 
lake going out, and meeting a party there just 
coming in, engage to guide them and row them 
back to the Upper Dam ; and although we had a 
twenty-four miles' row, generally with a head wind 
one way, and sometimes both, we had six dollars 
to recompense us for our hard day's work. I 
think one of the best investments I ever made 
was parting with sixty hard-earned dollars for 
one of the first six Indian Rock boats that were 
built at Rangeley by Mr. Ball, the old-time super- 



GUIDING DAYS 131 

intendent of the Oquossoc Angling Association, 
and Luther Tibbetts, taking for a pattern a boat 
brought from Ogdensburg, New York. They 
were lap-streaked cedar boats, shaped much like 
a canoe, being pointed at both ends, and about 
sixteen and a half feet long, and which are 
now so common all over the lake region, the 
model of which has been changed but little. 

The boats which the guides used on the Rich- 
ardson Lake were all quite heavy, and more or 
less hard to row; and although nearly all had 
sails, it was seldom we had a chance to use them 
to very good advantage, and generally more time 
would be wasted in trying to sail than if depend- 
ing on our oars. With this boat I could make 
the pull from the Upper Dam to the arm of the 
lake and back in almost any ordinary day, and 
take about as much load as any of the large 
boats. When the old guides first saw the boat, 
they told me I had fooled away my money, for 
the boat would not stand either baggage or 
rough weather. In this they soon found them- 
selves mistaken, for I could go in almost any 
wind that blew, and with a fair load could pull 
up past Hardscrabble, while they were obliged 



132 LAKE AND FOREST 

to seek shelter at Saints' Rest. It did me good 
service for a few years, and then I sold it for 
what it cost me; and an Upton guide used it for 
his guide boat for more than twenty years. 

The summer of '"j^ the first steamer was put 
on Richardson Lake by Captain Farrar, also on 
Mooselookmeguntic Lake by Captain Howard, 
who the year before had put the small steamboat 
which he called the Mollychimkamunk on Oquos- 
soc Lake. Not finding much business on Moose- 
lookmeguntic Lake, Captain Howard sold the 
steamer to me that fall; and in the spring of '77 
I fitted her up and began running her, making 
my headquarters at Indian Rock, which I con- 
tinued to do for the four years following. 

The name Indian Rock originated from a broad, 
flat ledge on the east side of the stream at the 
junction of the Rangeley and Kennebago streams. 
This ledge, covered with moss, made an ideal 
camping-ground, where it is said the Indians 
held their councils and smoked their pipes of 
peace. A few rods lower down on the west 
bank is said to be an Indian burying-ground. 

The rapid, shallow water at the junction of the 
streams, and the half-mile of stream below, partly 



GUIDING DAYS 133 

rapids, and farther on deep and almost current- 
less to the mouth of the stream, where the waves 
from the Cupsuptic Lake form the Cupsuptic bar, 
were among the best of the old-time fishing waters 
of the lakes. Here the old-time hunter, Perley 
Smith, had one of the first fishing camps about 
the lakes. This he later sold to Mr. C. T. 
Richardson, who in turn sold to a party of gentle- 
men, who in the year '68 organized the Oquos- 
soc Angling Association, with George Shepard 
Page of Stanley, New Jersey, as its president, 
and Lewis B. Reed of New York as its vice-presi- 
dent, and with our Senator William P. Frye as 
one of the original members. 

Camp Kennebago, the camp of the Oquossoc 
Angling Association, was the point from which 
I got the most of my business, taking parties 
around the lake on fishing trips, as there was but 
little through business ; but I made a regular 
night and morning trip from Indian Rock to 
Upper Dam, connecting with the boats on the 
Richardson and Rangeley lakes. For the first 
two years after owning a steamer, I would guide 
more or less during the summer, leaving some 
men on my boat, and always returned from my 



134 LAKE AND FOREST 

trips with more money than the boat would earn. 
By that time, as business was increasing, I thought 
it best to stay with my steamer all the time. 

The lakes presented a very different appearance 
from what they do now, for, though the old Upper 
Dam raised the water in the lake seven feet, it was 
only kept up while they were getting the logs 
through ; and early in July the water was usually 
down to its original level, and shoals and sand- 
bars, that had been ages in forming, were exposed. 
Nowhere about the lakes is the change more 
noticeable than at Indian Rock, for where now is 
the lake, was a well-wooded, flat piece of country, 
and a stream with quite high banks, although 
now entirely covered. The entrance from the 
stream into the lake was a good half mile from 
Indian Rock, and there was barely enough water 
to float my steamer, and when a northwest wind 
blew hard, I used to have difficulty in getting 
over the bar. From the Cupsuptic Lake into the 
Mooselookmeguntic was more shoal water, and 
as much the shortest strip of sandbar was over 
by Mr. Frye's camp, I usually made my run 
out into the lake from this point. Cutting a lot 
of stakes, I drove them near together, putting 



GUIDING DAYS 135 

brush on the upper side, and shovelling the sand 
from the shore side on to it, building a sort of 
jetty, to keep the sand from washing back in. 
In this way the channel was kept clear. Twenty- 
five years ago there were many dry pine trees 
that stood near the water's edge, but very few 
of them are left now. The high water has 
softened their roots, and one after another they 
have fallen, till about the last one is gone. Any 
one looking at the lake now would not think 
it possible that a man ever waded across from 
shore to shore between Cupsuptic and Moose- 
lookmeguntic lakes, but I have done it when 
the water was but a little above my knees. Al- 
though there is much regret expressed that the 
Upper Dam was ever raised, adding the eleven 
feet of water, yet a few years more will see the 
most of the ''dry ki" out of the way, and in 
many cases the beeches will be back again. The 
eleven feet rise of the lake has been a great 
advantage to navigation, as the Upper Dam, 
Indian Rock, Cupsuptic, and Bemis were hard 
places to get to. 

Many of the people of Maine little realize what 
they owe to its woods and waters, outside of the 



136 LAKE AND FOREST 

immense lumbering interests. Its fish and game 
bring to the state millions of dollars yearly, 
villages have sprung up and regions developed 
that would otherwise have been nothing but 
forests, and residents of the state have had the 
opportunity to come in contact with some of the 
finest people the world produces. 

I shall always retain a feeling of gratitude for 
the many kindnesses I have received from the 
members of the Oquossoc Angling Association, 
and from its superintendent, Mr. Richardson, in 
those days when I was young in doing business 
for myself; but a gloom of sadness comes over 
me when I think how few of that noble body of 
men, who used to gather around that big camp- 
fire at Camp Kennebago, are still on this side 
of the dark carry, for many have passed to the 
other side. Mr. Richardson, hale and hearty yet, 
though over eighty years of age, has moved away, 
and his kind face is seldom seen at the lakes ; 
and in his place is a younger superintendent, 
who, with his efficient wife, runs the camp in a 
satisfactory and up-to-date manner. While the 
club still flourishes, new members having been 
added who are men of as sterling worth as the 



GUIDING DAYS 137 

old members, and many fine cottages have been 
built, to me it is not the Camp Kennebago of 
former years. 

The travel at the lakes had increased but little 
in the four years that I lived at Indian Rock. 
The year before I started my first steamboat 
on the lake, Camp Henry, now the fine outlay 
called the Mountain View House, at the outlet 
of Rangeley Lake, also Soule's Camp at Haines 
Landing, now the Mooselookmeguntic House, 
were opened up as public camps and began 
to get more or less patronage from sportsmen 
coming in by way of Farmington and Phillips ; 
and this year the narrow gauge railroad was 
built from Farmington to PhilHps. The travel 
to Upper Dam and the lower lakes came almost 
entirely by way of Andover and Umbagog. 



CHAPTER X 

CAMP BEMIS AND THE BIRCHES 

REALIZING that my steamboat business 
might be improved by my opening a 
camp, I bought the camps at the mouth 
of Bemis Stream of the Buckfield and Canton 
Railroad, but which were built by the members 
of the Oquossoc Angling Association, attracted 
there by the fine fishing. The railroad company 
had purchased the camps with the intention of 
encouraging travel over their line by putting a 
buckboard road through from Byron to Bemis ; 
but after cutting the road through, and getting 
a buckboard over it two or three times, the route 
was abandoned, and they sold the camps to me. 
These camps stood on the very site where we 
used to tent when on the drive; and I well 
remember putting in a pleasant afternoon while 
on the drive, asleep in the crevice of the cleft 
rock, which was carpeted with leaves and ''spills" 

138 



CAMP BEMIS AND THE BIRCHES 139 

which fell from the heavy growth of trees which 
stood around. 

My travel soon began to build up, and to keep 
pace with this I was obliged to replace the old 
camps with new and larger ones ; and soon the 
only one of the original camps left was the 
cottage built the year the railroad company 
owned the camps, by its president, ex-Governor 
Washburn, who with his family occupied it that 
summer. 

Although Bemis was the jumping-off place and 
a hard place to reach, I soon had the camps well 
filled the greater part of the season, and it is 
with a feeling of pride and pleasure that I read 
or hear the praises of Camp Bemis as it was in 
the old days. Getting to Bemis camps was 
rendered more difficult by the lateness with 
which I usually landed my passengers there; for 
it was generally late in the afternoon before 
passengers and baggage could get across the 
carry from the Rangeley Lake, or Upper Dam, 
and started for Bemis, and usually considerably 
after dark before we reached there ; and on ac- 
count of the shallowness of the water before the 
lake was raised, I was obliged to anchor my 



140 LAKE AND FOREST 

Steamer quite a way from shore, and transport 
my passengers in a small rowboat which I towed. 
And many nights I have gone scudding down 
there before a northwester, really sorry for the 
passengers, and almost wishing that they had 
not come, and thinking of the probable unhappi- 
ness to be caused, and sarcasm to be showered 
on me, when they realized what it really was to be 
out in Bemis Bay in a small boat when a Bemis 
gale was on. I used to try hard to get the boat 
around into the wind with as little motion as 
possible. The best way to do this I found was 
by working the boat quartering to the waves, 
and throwing the anchor while under good head 
way, which would snap her around into the 
wind quickly, without much opportunity to lie 
in the trough of the waves ; but she would usually 
get two or three good rolls before she got headed 
around, which would generally bring some strong 
exclamations from the passengers, and their 
ruffles would not get entirely quieted when I 
would get the rowboat alongside. They often 
declared that they would not risk their lives in 
so small a boat in so strong a sea, but they 
usually thought better of it in a few moments, 



CAMP BEMIS AND THE BIRCHES 141 

and allowed me to help them into the rowboat; 
and I would soon have them ashore, always dry, 
but sometimes in no pleasant frame of mind. One 
of the rules of the camp, especially when it was 
late and rough, was to have a good fire started 
in a vacant camp, when I gave the signal with 
the steamboat's whistle that there were passengers 
aboard ; and on being shown into a camp with a 
bright, open fire, leaving them for fifteen minutes, 
and going back again to tell them that supper 
was ready, I always found them in very different 
spirits. And often ladies who were '* scared blue " 
when I got them ashore, have told me that 
everything was fine, and that boating experience 
the greatest lark they ever had. 

After running the Bemis camps for four years 
and finding my trade growing so that I did not 
have room, and not caring to build more at 
Bemis, I located on Students' Island, and called 
the camps there the Students' Island Camps. 
I soon found that the name did not give people 
a very favorable impression, as some of my 
letters of inquiry would state that parties did not 
care to go if there were to be a lot of noisy 
students about the place; and as there were a 



142 LAKE AND FOREST 

number of birch trees growing in front of the 
camp, I thought the name of The Birches wOuld 
be appropriate. This name at once seemed to 
take better with the people. 

The name Students' Island came from the 
fact that three students from Yale College built 
a camp on the rise in about the centre of it, 
sometime in the fifties. They built quite a sub- 
stantial log camp, boating the brick to build their 
fireplace from the old Adams farm, on the 
north shore, near the head of the lake, six miles 
from the island. The logs have all rotted away, 
but the bricks still show the location of the 
camp. 

Realizing the advantages of this place, I had 
had a lease of the island for some years. From 
the first of my hunting and guiding about the 
lakes, I had landed on this spot at every oppor- 
tunity, walked over the land, and climbed a tree 
to get the view; and even before I knew the 
wants of sportsmen, I had planned a dining 
room in the centre of the point, with camps 
having open fires extending from each side. 
Possibly the lay of the land, and my love for 
camping out by an open fire, suggested this; 



CAMP BEMIS AND THE BIRCHES 143 

and that it was the right idea is proved by the 
demand for camps. My work since I com- 
menced at The Birches has seemed to be to 
build camps to get money to build more camps ; 
and, although I now have twenty-eight of differ- 
ent sizes for sportsmen, still the demand goes 
on each year for more, and for the past three 
years it has been a succession of noes to the 
inquiries of people all over the country for a 
camp at The Birches. 



CHAPTER XI 

THE BARKER 

THINKING that I had the place about 
large enough, and that for many rea- 
sons it is not well " to have too many 
eggs in one basket," I was prompted two 
years ago to buy thirteen hundred feet of the 
shore of the " Decker strip " of land, taking in 
Sandy Point, which, of course, I consider the 
best spot on the lake, outside of The Birches. 
Yes, better than my much-loved Bemis; for 
although I have always known that Bemis was 
not a place to develop as a large summer resort, 
yet my love for it as it was in former years 
still clings to it and will as long as memory 
lives, for it was my home when passing the 
best years of my life ; and I now have a little 
daughter, Florence, who is nearly ten years old, 
to remind me of one who for five years helped 

144 



THE BARKER I45 

me to make Camp Bemis what it was. Here, 
without reflecting on other places about the 
lakes, or the many fine people who come here 
now, were gathered each year people second to 
none who ever honored the summer resorts of 
Maine, knowing whom would give one a feeling 
of pleasure at realizing he lived in a world with 
such fine people. Although those who are visit- 
ors to our lakes to-day are of the same stamp, 
yet we got closer to them and knew them 
better, than in these days of so much hurry 
up, for none came and went that we did not 
get well acquainted with. 

Last summer the new place at Sandy Point 
was opened up, which I have decided to call The 
Barker, well knowing that the name is no honor 
to the pretty sandy point, but hoping that the 
place may prove a favorite, and continue to do 
so, long after its present proprietor has ceased 
to run camps, and prompted by that feeling, so 
natural to us all, in 

" Whatever voyage in life we make, 
Though driven before the blast, 
To leave something in the troubled wake, 
To show that we have passed." 



146 LAKE AND FOREST 

Although I have built a large house to start 
with, at which some may be surprised, after my 
experience with log camps, I intend that the 
camps shall come later, and five are already in 
process of construction for the spring opening, 
and I expect more will be completed before 
the summer travel begins. One has to cover 
a good deal of ground in kitchen, dining room, 
and office, and it is necessary to go into the air 
a piece to make a structure look right; and per- 
haps this is my excuse for the thirty-five rooms 
which the new house contains, and which I am 
sure that the visitor who wants rooms in a house 
will find pleasant, and with a view unsurpassed 
in the region. 



CHAPTER XII 

ANECDOTES OF MY GUESTS 

CAMPS are not all that I have been build- 
ing since the first camp at Bemis, for 
steamboats have been as necessary as 
camps. The Oquossoc was the name of my first 
steamer, and the first year after opening Camp 
Bemis, I purchased a small boat, called the Rein- 
deer^ which I soon afterward sold and built a 
larger one, the Metalhik, which I used for a reg- 
ular boat, using the Oquossoc for a spare boat. 
The next year followed the Mollelocket, and I 
soon did away with the Oquossoc altogether. A 
few years afterward I built the Oozalliic, later the 
Flore7ice E. Barker^ and a year or two after this 
I purchased a new steamer, the Wm. P. Frye. 

At one time a little New York miss, in giv- 
ing the names of my steamers to some lately 
arrived guests at The Birches, spoke her piece as 

147 



148 LAKE AND FOREST 

follows, *' There's the Florence E. Barker, the Wm. 
P. Frye, the Metalhik, the Oozalktc, and the 
Mollelocket ; and the Mollelocket is down at Bemis 
with her boiler out." 

Although these steamers are no ocean liners, the 
largest being the Florence E. Barker, which is 
sixty-five feet long, they are as large as it is 
profitable or practicable to run, as the landings 
are so situated that the smaller boats, and more 
of them, are better adapted to the work than one 
large one. Although the Florence E. Barker and 
the Wm. P. Frye are the newer and more substan- 
tial boats, I still remember the good deeds of the 
Metalluk ; for she has earned me many an honest 
dollar, and ridden out many a gale. Always first in 
the water in the spring, and last to be pulled from 
the water in the fall, she has been abused and 
scratched by the ice, both spring and fall, carrying 
safely her loads of passengers and freight. How 
many pleasant chats I have had with friends in the 
pilot house, and how many fair hands have graced 
the well-worn spokes of her wheel, struggling with 
the first lesson of starboard and port ; and it was 
on this boat that Governor Long jocosely remarked 
that he had the experience that afterward made 



ANECDOTES OF MY GUESTS 149 

him Secretary of the United States Navy, when 
introducing me to some naval men in Washing- 
ton. 

Speaking of Governor Long reminds me of my 
first acquaintance with him. It was in the days 
when Captain Andy Smith ran the Welokenneba- 
cook on Richardson Lake, and all who ever met 
him will remember him with pleasure, as well as 
the old red hat he used to wear, which was filled 
with fly-hooks by which he reckoned his friends 
who had put them there. He had known Gov- 
ernor Long from boyhood, and one day, as I was 
crossing the dam, I met Captain Andy with a 
gentleman and two little girls. As I neared them, 
Captain Andy stepped in front of his companions, 
and gave me a shock by saying, " Now, Fred, I am 
going to introduce you to a real live governor, 
none of your thin-skinned, shoddy kind ; he's all 
oak, and copper-fastened, and the same John D. 
Long every day in the week ; " and the cordial 
handshake I received convinced me Andy was 
right. And for the next five years he and his 
family became regular visitors at Camp Bemis. 

I well remember another incident when the 
governor and Captain Andy met on my boat. 



150 LAKE AND FOREST 

after not having seen each other for some time, 
and after the good-natured greetings, Captain 
Andy said, " Well. Governor, the last time I saw 
you, you didn't see me." 

" How was that ? " asked Mr. Long. 

" Oh, well, it was in Boston," said Andy. ''You 
were in pretty big company, and you didn't see 
me. 

" You know, Andy, if I did not recognize you, I 
did not see you, don't you } " 

" Yes, yes," said Andy. 

" Then why didn't you make yourself known .? " 

" Well, to tell you the truth. Governor, you had 
on a new hat and I had on an old one." 

"Now, Andy," said the governor, "you know 
me well enough to know that would not make any 
difference to me, no matter who was around." 

"Yes, I do. Governor," said Andy; "but you 
were in a hurry and so was I, and I thought I 
wouldn't stop you." 

Writing this reminds me of some of the lake wit 
expressed by our good Senator Frye, whom I am 
always glad to see on my boat many times during 
a summer. One day my steamer touched at the 
senator's camp with some friends of his aboard, 



ANECDOTES OF MY GUESTS 15 1 

and found him sitting on a rock, casting the 
fly. A passenger stepped off with them, and 
asked for an introduction to the senator; and 
he was introduced as Mr. So-and-So, from Some- 
where, **And," the gentleman added, as he held 
out his hand, " editor of Such-and-Such a news- 
paper." 

" Ah," said the senator, as he shook hands. 
"Well, I'm a fisherman." 

At another time the senator was on my boat 
as I ran into Indian Rock, and Superintendent 
Packard came down to meet us. 

" Hello, Packard," said the senator, " hear 
your cook's left." 

** Yes," snapped Mr. Packard, who was a quick- 
spoken man. 

" Well, what are you going to do now } " asked 
the senator. 

" Cook myself," Packard responded. 

" That won't do you any good," seriously said 
the senator. " There wouldn't anybody eat you 
if you did." 

One day in talking politics with an old guide 
at the lakes, who boasted he had always been a 
stanch Democrat, knowing that he had guided 



152 LAKE AND FOREST 

Mr. Frye more or less, I asked him, " How 
about Mr. Frye?" 

'* Oh," said he, " I always vote for Frye, he's 
such a darned good feller ; " and this sentiment 
is voiced by all the senator's Maine acquaint- 
ances ; for, like Secretary Long, we always find 
him the same, whether one meets him in Wash- 
ington or in the Maine woods. 

Representative Dingley was also a frequent 
visitor to Camp Bemis, and all who knew him 
felt a personal loss at his death ; and no truer 
words were ever spoken over the remains of a 
man than those of the minister who preached his 
funeral sermon. 

"The heights by great men gained and kept, 
Were not attained by sudden flight, 
But they, while their companions slept, 
Were toiling upward through the night." 

In the season of 1883 Mr. Francis Parkman 
was a guest at Camp Bemis for six or eight 
weeks, and many were the pleasant walks I had 
with him on the piazza of Cleft Rock Hall, after 
supper, he telling me many of his early expe- 
riences in the West, and the early French his- 



ANECDOTES OF MY GUESTS 153 

tory of Canada, and Arnold's famous trip through 
Maine to Quebec ; but I did not know he was 
an author until I received through the mail his 
book, **The Oregon Trail." He was a man 
whose acquaintance was much sought after by 
the guests, and he was pleasant and genial to 
all. The following winter I built him a camp 
at Bemis, but ill health before the next season 
caused him to give up his trip here. 

George Fred Williams was once a visitor to 
our lakes. It was before the days of steamboats, 
and Frank P. Thomas, now division superintend- 
ent for the International Paper Company, and 
myself were the guides to take the party from 
the arm of the lake to Upper Dam. There 
were three ladies and three gentlemen, and we 
guides rowed the ladies and one gentleman, 
while Mr. Williams and the other young man 
rowed themselves in the small boat. The im- 
pression that I received was that he was a first- 
class fellow, and pulled a rattling good oar for 
a city chap. 

For a number of seasons Governor William 
E. Russell was a guest at the private camps on 
our lower lakes. On the trip made just after 



154 LAKE AND FOREST 

his election as governor, at about every station 
along the route he was honored with the greet- 
ing, "Welcome, Governor Russell," and he ex- 
pressed himself when he got into the woods, 
as being glad to be where he could not 
see " Welcome, Governor Russell " for a while. 
This suggested to his host the chance to spring 
a little joke on him, and he got the camp paint- 
pot out, and painted on a sheet, in large, black 
letters, "Welcome, Governor Russell," and had 
one of the guides take it in a roundabout way 
to an old deserted lumbering camp in the woods, 
not far away, instructing him to get through the 
broken splits of the roof, and hang it over the 
door, without leaving any tracks in the snow in 
front of the camp. The next morning he invited 
the governor to try still hunting for deer, and 
accordingly steered him for the old camp. Not 
a track was to be seen to show that there was 
any one but themselves in the forest. As they 
swung around to the front of the old camp, 
the governor looked up, and stopped in aston- 
ishment at the "Welcome, Governor Russell," 
looking down at him. 



CHAPTER XIII 

EXPERIENCES ON THE ICE 

WHEN Camp Bemis was first started my 
supplies came by the way of Phillips, 
and I used to get most of my heavy 
articles in the winter, hauling them to Rangeley 
by team, where I used to store them, awaiting the 
time when the spring travelling on the lakes 
should be at its best. Toting to Bemis was a 
difficult job, across the two lakes and a mile and 
a half carry, unless we were favored with good 
going; and ofttimes in the winter, when we have 
left Rangeley with heavy loads, we have got to 
Bemis with scarcely hay and grain enough on 
the sleds to feed the horses, having thrown the 
loads off, one article after another, the whole 
length of the lakes. Often when the Rangeley 
lumbermen have been logging down the lakes, 
they have had some hard experiences in getting 
their supplies to camp, as always after a big snow- 

155 



156 LAKE AND FOREST 

Storm the ice is pressed down by the weight of 
the snow, and more or less water rises on top of 
it, forming deep slough holes at intervals, into 
which the sled sinks ; and the snow in front of 
the bars has to be shovelled out before it can be 
started, when with a short pull it sinks again, 
which means heavy lifts for the men and kilUng 
work for the horses. In one of these winters, 
when the going was very hard, Mr. H. T. Kimball, 
who was the veteran toter of the lakes, lost two 
fine horses, which died from fatigue and exposure 
on the lake, before they could be got to camp or 
back to the settlement. 

My plan generally was to take advantage of the 
time just after the ice would rise in the spring, 
which was usually soon after the first of April 
and when the sun had melted the snow and shell 
ice and the water had run under the ice ; but it 
was much safer and better to be off the ice before 
the afternoon sun had softened it, as it was then 
much harder going, as well as being much more 
dangerous. Many have been the two and three 
o'clock morning starts we have taken from Range- 
ley with several teams to take advantage of the 
night freeze, put in good condition by the good 



EXPERIENCES ON THE ICE 157 

hot breakfast given us by Mrs. Jerry Oakes, who 
even at that early hour would insist on getting 
up and giving us a warm meal. And what jolly 
times we would have skipping over the lakes! 
There was something about these early morning 
trips on the lake, when the ice was in prime con- 
dition, that was very exhilarating, shared by both 
horses and men ; and we would often find ourselves 
squabbling in a game of catch-as-catch-can, and 
the teamsters, often men well along in years, would 
play like boys. Many times before daylight had 
fairly made its appearance we would reach the 
carry at the foot of Rangeley Lake, and would 
reach Bemis without any trouble whatever. 

Of course it was not always smooth sailing and 
there were times when we would have a team in, 
or come very near having one in, and as a safe- 
guard seldom had one team alone, especially if 
the ice were getting thin ; as, in cases of a team 
getting in, it was policy to have another near to 
help get it out, but having one team a consider- 
able distance ahead of the other. 

When a team breaks through the ice, a sled 
seldom goes in, and so the first thing to be done 
is to get a rope around the horses' necks, clear 



158 LAKE AND FOREST 

them from the sled, and pull it back away from 
them ; then taking one of the horses from another 
team, and hitching to the rope and prying up 
the hind-quarters with a plank or pole, they 
can be pulled out very easily, generally no 
worse for their ducking, after they have been 
driven far enough to get warm. When another 
horse is not available, two men can pull a horse 
out of the water by putting a slip noose around 
its neck, so as to choke it, causing it to fill with 
air, when it will float up lighter in the water, and 
it is much easier to draw it out. But it is usually 
a hard pull, hard on the horse, as well as hard on 
the men. It is quite exciting, especially to one 
who has never seen a horse in the water, and 
coolness and thoughtfulness are good things to 
exercise. 

A light set of threefold blocks should always 
be carried, with a hook that can be hooked in 
a notch in the ice, and with this purchase, half 
the strength of an ordinary man is sufficient to 
pull a horse from the water without the use of 
the slip knot. Any sensible toter will not be 
caught on the lake without an axe, for it is not 
only useful for cutting a hole to find the thick- 



EXPERIENCES ON THE ICE 1 59 

ness of the ice, but in time of trouble it is 
indispensable, as in case of a team getting in, 
it is necessary to cut places for the men's feet, 
to enable them to brace themselves for a good 
pull. If nothing more serious happens than a 
horse getting its foot caught in a crack, it 
might lead to a great deal of trouble if an axe 
were not handy. A rope should always be kept 
on horses' necks when the ice is dangerous, as 
when breaking in they are likely to slat their 
heads under the ice before you have time to 
put a rope on them. The best hitch to put on 
a horse's neck to draw on to choke it, is to put 
the two ends of a rope together through the 
loop, making two ropes around the neck instead 
of one, which will not cut as a single rope 
would, and will slacken the moment the strain 
is off. In case a rope is not available, the 
reins will often answer the same purpose. 

Although I have been on the ice with horses 
a great deal in the past thirty years and have 
taken all kinds of chances, I have been for- 
tunate enough not to drown but one horse. 
This was done by his breaking the throat latch 
and clearing his head from the bridle, and slat- 



l6o LAKE AND FOREST 

ting his head under the ice, while we had hold 
of the reins, and before we could get a rope 
around his neck. 

A number of years ago, when Ma'am Peary 
used to be the cook at Bemis, it got to be the 
tenth day of May before I was ready to take 
her down the lake. I got the lightest and 
cheapest horse I could get in Rangeley, and on 
my inquiry was told that if I did not bring 
the horse back, fifty dollars would pay the bill. 
I received many warnings not to put a horse 
on the ice, and one in particular from Mr. Straw, 
who was the agent for the Union Water Power 
Company, who, in company with Mr. Henry 
Kimball, had just returned from Upper Dam, 
pushing their pung ahead of them. Mr. Straw 
said that they had found the ice so thin that 
they had left the horse at Upper Dam for me 
to take up on the scow, when the ice should 
have left the lake ; and it was not till a month 
or two later that it came out that they drowned 
the horse soon after leaving Upper Dam. It 
was a remarkably smart horse, and as they 
drove on to the ice, following the track where 
a four-horse load had been hauled the afternoon 




Camp Parkman at Bemis 
Interior of Camp Parkman 



EXPERIENCES ON THE ICE i6l 

before, Mr. Kimball made the remark that they 
would make the ten-mile drive to Haines Land- 
ing in three-quarters of an hour. Mr. Straw 
was just returning his watch to his pocket after 
taking the time, when the fore feet of the 
horse suddenly went through, and throwing his 
head down, he shot under the ice. Mr. Straw and 
Mr. Kimball scrambled out of the pung, just as 
it, too, was disappearing. They succeeded in 
pulling the pung back and in getting the horse 
out, but not till after he was drowned. 

I took my horse to Mountain View by land 
the night before, to be ready for an early start 
across the lake, and on getting up at one o'clock 
was pleased to find that it was a crisp, frosty 
morning. I gave the horse four quarts of grain, 
but he seemed to think that two suppers in one 
night were very unnecessary, and proceeded to 
make a very slow job of munching it. I stamped 
around the barn floor, with my ulster collar well 
turned up, for a while, and was disgusted, on 
going in beside him ojice or twice, to find what 
slow progress he was making, and soon dis- 
covered how to quicken him up. Giving him 
a punch or two in the ribs to wake him up, 



l62 LAKE AND FOREST 

I would pull the grain away from him with one 
hand, and throw back a little with the other, 
and he, thinking it was nearly gone, would pro- 
ceed to make away with it rapidly. I soon had 
him hitched up, and a good three-quarters-inch 
rope around his neck, and with a young man 
who had just joined me at Lake Point Cottage, 
we proceeded across the carry to the Moose- 
lookmeguntic House, where we were to take 
Ma'am Peary aboard. I figured on the time it 
would take to get the ordinary woman up and 
started at that time in the morning, having dubi- 
ous thoughts of the waste of valuable time, and 
was surprised to see Mrs. Peary coming down 
the steps, bag in hand, as we approached the 
house. On telling her that I expected it would 
take a half-hour at least for her to get her 
eyes open, she replied, " La, sakes ! you needn't 
worry about getting me up, for I've been up 
and had my bed made for an hour." 

The ice was black as a coal, but stiffened and 
in good condition by the crisp air, and I sent 
the eight hundred pounds of horse-flesh along 
at a lively pace, we joking Ma'am occasionally 
about how to handle herself when the horse 



EXPERIENCES ON THE ICE 163 

went out of sight, which he was liable to do 
at any minute, she retaliating by telling us that 
she should not begin to handle till the time 
came, and she should keep dry till she was wet. 
By daylight we were at Bemis, and I was back 
again and off the lake at the Mountain View 
House at seven o'clock that morning, the horse 
not having put a foot through. Just as I got 
the horse put up a man came along leading a 
cow that he was going to take to Indian Rock, 
and asked if the ice would hold her. He was 
told that I had just driven off there with a 
horse, and he proceeded to take my track. Soon 
hearing a big outcry and going out of the barn, 
all there was to be seen was the man, the rope, 
and the horns of the cow, and before we got 
her out we had to take boats out on the ice to 
stand in. 

It was not always that we could get the women 
help to the camp on the ice with teams, and 
as it was necessary to get the help there before 
the ice broke up, in order to get the camps in 
readiness for the first fishermen, we have had 
some jolly times in handsledding the girls across 
the ice, one girl and man to a sled; and it was 



1 64 LAKE AND FOREST 

very often the case, when the ice got thin and 
there were some timid ones, we would put a 
light boat across the sled and allow them to 
ride in the boat. And there is hardly a spring 
or fall that we do not do more or less icing in 
this way, for with a man at each end of the 
boat, one can go in safety on very thin ice. 

As I have been asked many questions in years 
past, in regard to the ice freezing in our lakes, 
and the cracks and reefs, which commence to 
show themselves soon after, perhaps a few points 
in regard to it will be of interest. The lakes 
usually get sealed over some time from Thanks- 
giving to the middle of December, although two 
years ago the greater part of the lakes were 
open at Christmas time, which is the latest I 
ever knew. The coves and greater part of the 
lakes will generally get frozen over lightly some 
little time before they get sealed up to stay, as 
a wind will spring up, get the water into motion, 
and the ice will be broken and driven into the 
coves in larger or smaller pieces, where it often 
freezes together, leaving the square corners stick- 
ing up in all directions, making it very uncom- 
fortable to walk over. Snowstorms before the 



EXPERIENCES ON THE ICE 165 

lake freezes cool the water, and cause it to 
freeze earlier than it otherwise would. I have 
heard it said by people who live about the lake 
that it was impossible for the lake to freeze up 
** rough," when a wind was blowing, and have 
heard others say that it will freeze up in waves. 
Both of these arguments are right, and not right, 
to a certain extent, for I remember one Thanks- 
giving Day, a few years ago, the whole of Bemis 
Bay froze over for a distance of two miles or 
more, when the wind was blowing as hard as 
it could blow, and the heaviest kind of a sea 
was running. It had snowed hard all day, and 
the water being ice cold, the snow did not melt, 
but was blown into the bay, packing together, 
where it would soon freeze, although in motion 
for rods between where it was frozen and the 
open water, the snow-covered waves making a 
very pretty sight. But it would only freeze when 
packed against the ice, which it kept doing very 
rapidly, working farther out into the lake all 
the time. 

After the lake is all frozen over, if the snow 
doesn't come on it, the ice begins to expand, and 
the thicker it gets, the more it expands, and of 



l66 LAKE AND FOREST 

course has to give somewhere, and this causes 
the surface of the lake to be more or less uneven, 
rising in some places and lowering in others, 
though hardly perceptible to the eye. Then as 
expansion becomes greater, and the ice presses 
from the shores toward the middle of the lake, 
reefs are formed at the point where the pressure 
is the greatest. In some places the two edges 
of the ice will rise together, often going five or 
six feet into the air, and in other places they will 
rise but little, one side sliding under and the other 
over. Sometimes, when the pressure is great be- 
fore the ice gives, the reefs will be thrown up 
with great force, making a loud report. In times 
of thaw the ice will contract, and cracks and 
reefs will be pulled quite a way apart by the ice 
being frozen to the shore. 

There is always strong pressure on the exposed 
points on the lake, and often large rocks are 
pushed up on the shore by the ice; and I once 
had a solid log pier, filled with rocks to the top, 
pushed four feet into a gravel bank by the ex- 
panding ice, before I learned the secret of build- 
ing a wharf with its exposed sides slanting, so 
that the ice would rise as it pressed against it. 



EXPERIENCES ON THE ICE 167 

When we were getting ice at The Birches last 
winter, having a hole cut a few rods off the point 
of the island, the ice suddenly gave way on the 
point, rising up on the shore, pushing a large rock 
from its gravel bed till it came on top of the ice, 
and the water boiled through the hole where we 
were cutting, which was a few yards across, knee- 
deep. The man who was pulling the cakes from 
the lake with the tongs had just hitched on to 
one as the water rose. He made one attempt to 
pull it out, then dropped it, with the tongs, and 
legged it with the rest of the men rods away from 
the hole. 

The idea is often expressed that reefs and 
cracks are caused by the air, which is a mistake, 
as they are caused solely by expansion of the ice. 
It is continually working, either by expansion or 
contraction, and reefs are never safe to team over 
without being carefully examined. Once, when 
driving across the lake, we came to a reef, and 
found no place to cross until we had followed 
to the end of it, which was a good half-mile 
from shore, where we crossed on smooth ice, rods 
away from the reef, and where the surface was 
as level as the rest of the lake. When we were 



l68 LAKE AND FOREST 

opposite the reef the horse suddenly dropped 
through, the water coming well up to his back, 
and all supposed he had gone into the lake ; but 
with tremendous plunges and leaps he came out 
on to the dry ice, breaking away from the sled as 
he did so. In getting the sled out we examined 
the spot, and found that, in expanding, the ice 
had settled down instead of rising, and there was 
not crack enough for a horse to put his foot 
through, yet the water was a good five feet deep 
over it. 

The going out of the ice in spring is as much 
of a conundrum to many people as the winter 
reefs, judging from the many questions I have 
been asked about it. This is also very simple 
when it is understood. Where the snow lies on 
the ice it protects it from the warm spring sun ; 
but where it is blown off, giving the sun a chance 
to come to the solid blue ice, it penetrates it 
very quickly, and we usually speak of it as being 
"honeycombed." Often in the morning after 
a cold night when it would hold tons of weight, 
toward night, after a warm day, it will not begin 
to hold the weight of a man ; and I have often 
stuck my axe handle through in spots where it 



EXPERIENCES ON THE ICE 169 

was over two feet thick, and where for days after 
this we would go on it with teams, by going in 
the morning. Whether the night is very cold 
or not, after tlie sun goes down the ice begins to 
stiffen. 

There are different ways of the ice leaving the 
lakes. Sometimes, when it is quite thick and will 
hold the weight of a man in most places, a strong 
wind will spring up, and where it is melted away 
from the shores enough to allow the whole body 
to get a start, the wind will keep it in motion, 
pressing it out on the shore, where it will keep 
falling to pieces, until in a few hours' time a 
whole lake full of ice will be ground to a powder 
on the rocky shore, sometimes piling up twenty 
or thirty feet high. A few years ago at The 
Birches, which commands a view of a larger part 
of the lake, in the morning not a bit of water 
was to be seen, and at night not a bit of ice 
was to be seen. This was the twentieth day of 
May. 

Four times in the thirty-three years I have 
been on the lake, the ice has gone out in April, 
last spring going the earliest that was ever known, 
allowing me to run my steamer the twenty-fifth day 



I/O LAKE AND FOREST 

of April. Many times it has been the twentieth 
and past of May, and one year it stayed in the 
lake till the twenty-seventh. Another year the 
lake partially cleared the twenty-third, so that 
I started out with my steamer, and was obliged 
to steer by compass for miles, owing to a thick 
snowstorm. The snow, the water was so cold, 
lay on the surface, and we ploughed a road 
through, which, to look back at, was a curious 
sight. The year that the ice remained in the 
lake till the twenty-seventh of May was twenty- 
eight years ago. I got a panful of snow from a 
drift near the shore, in June, boiled some maple 
syrup to a candy, and poured it on the snow, to 
let some people I was guiding have a sample of 
maple candy cooled on the snow in June. 

There are springs when we get but little wind, 
and the ice lies perfectly still in the lake, and 
melts out by the sun ; and in some of these springs 
I have worked my steamboat through by going 
very slowly; and, putting my foot over the side 
with a rubber boot on, I could drag it through the 
ice with ease, although it would sometimes be 
six or eight inches thick, but thoroughly " honey- 
combed." At times the ice seems to be very 



EXPERIENCES ON THE ICE 171 

tough, and almost as elastic as India-rubber, just 
before going out. I have dragged a light row- 
boat over ice, wearing long-legged rubber boots, 
walking on it, but bearing a large part of my 
weight on the boat, when the ice would sink 
above my knees before it would give way, then 
only breaking a hole the size of my foot. 

It is either sun or wind, or both, that makes 
away with the ice, though many people have 
very queer ideas as to what becomes of it. Some 
have asked me if it did not sink, and others if 
it did not go down through the Upper Dam. A 
few years ago a gentleman with whom I was 
talking at the Sportsmen's Show, in Madison 
Square Garden, asked me what became of the 
ice in the Rangeley Lakes in the spring, and on 
my telling that the sun or wind, or both, made 
away with it, he replied, "There is a lake up in 
New Hampshire where it always sinks." To my 
inquiry if he ever saw it sink, he replied that he 
never had. 

** Did you ever see it lying around on the bot- 
tom in shoal water ?" I asked. 

" No," said he. 

" Then what makes you think it sinks ? " 



1/2 LAKE AND FOREST 

" Many people have told me that it did," was 
his reply. 

Just as he was leaving, after answering satis- 
factorily to his own mind some questions of mine 
regarding it sinking, I said, " Have you ever 
given it a second thought yourself, instead of be- 
ing governed by what somebody told you, and 
don't you think it is an impossibility for ice to 
sink ? " 

He hesitated a moment, then turned around 
and passed me a cigar, and with a very polite 
bow walked along. 

I think it was the summer after this that a 
gentleman on my boat, in speaking of the ice, 
said, "There's a lake up in New Hampshire 
where the ice sinks." 

" Did you ever see it sink } " said I. 

"No," said he. 

" Ever see it lying around on the bottom ? " I 
asked. 

"No," he replied. 

" Then how do you know it does sink ? " 

"Why, I've been told so by people who live 
about there." 

" Did you ever give it much thought, or realize 



EXPERIENCES ON THE ICE 173 

that it is an impossibility for ice to sink of its 
own weight ? " I asked. 

" Gorry, I never did," was his answer ; " but I 
guess that's one on me, and I'll see it sink be- 
fore I tell that story again." 

This goes to show what ideas people will carry 
for years from what others have told them. I 
well remember a case something like this of a 
pond back in the mountains, near the national 
boundary. I have often been told that an old 
hunter used to catch many fish there, but the 
fish would bite only in the night, and although 
I said, " Is that so .'' " I knew much better, for 
I had myself caught many fish there without 
being foolish enough to fish in the night. 
Another thing that is often said is that beaver 
have a process by which they sink wood, whereby 
it will lie on the bottom ; and I have heard it 
said, that if it is disturbed by man, it will rise, 
and he cannot sink it again. No sensible beaver 
goes through any sleight-of-hand performance to 
sink wood. He merely takes it to the bottom 
and fastens it there, by pulling it under a root, 
or rolling a stone over it, and of course a green 
stick would soon get water-soaked so that it will 



174 LAKE AND FOREST 

stay of its own weight. He gets in his winter 
supply of food, pulling the first stick under a 
root or rolling a stone on to it, and the next one 
he will pull under the root, or stone, or stick 
which he has already fastened, and in this way 
weave them together till he gets a pile above 
water, and the weight above water will hold the 
rest down ; and the beaver can come out from 
his house and help himself to his submerged 
wood whenever he chooses, without being par- 
ticular which stick he takes. 



CHAPTER XIV 

VARIOUS TRIPS 

THE extension of the Portland and Rumford 
Falls Railway to Bemis in 1897 changed 
the state of affairs at Camp Bemis in 
many ways, for instead of being one of the most 
out-of-the-way places in the region, with a broad 
gauge railroad to its back door it is one of the 
most accessible points. And although a number 
of the old-timers lament the loss of its former 
seclusion and the presence of the two lumber mills 
that have gone up there, yet many people find 
its accessibility and the convenience of daily mails 
and telegraph and telephone very desirable. 

Notwithstanding that the railroad takes out 
many of the spruce trees, yet there is hard wood 
enough left, so that, looking at the mountains 
from the lake, there is hardly a spot where a 
tree can be missed. Last September the nine 
miles extension to the carry between the Rangeley 

175 



176 LAKE AND FOREST 

and Mooselookmeguntic lakes was completed, 
and Bemis is no longer the terminus, which may 
perhaps bring back some of its old-time quiet- 
ness. Probably the end of two years will see a 
connection with the Canadian Pacific Railway at 
Lake Megantic. 

The coming of the railroad to Bemis side-tracked 
Andover and the south arm of the Richardson 
Lake, and did away with what was a few years 
ago one of the popular routes to the lake, thereby 
shutting off from the tourist one of the prettiest 
country towns and one of the finest woodsy 
drives of the state. 

In these years, while Camp Bemis and The 
Birches have been developing, the Middle and 
Upper Dam, Haines Landing, and Billy Soule's 
have been keeping up with the times, and Bald 
Mountain Camps have lately been added to the 
list, and doing a thriving business, as well as the 
Mountain View House, Rangeley Lake House, 
and other resorts on the Rangeley Lake. The 
places that a few years ago were but fisher- 
men's camps now throng with summer visitors, 
who often pass the entire season here without 
wetting a hook. Although any one fisherman 



VARIOUS TRIPS 177 

seldom gets the catches that he used to get 
twenty-five years ago, he must remember that 
whereas he was then fishing almost alone, he now 
has many neighbors, and that it is only fair that 
he divide with his brother sportsmen ; and while 
some arc still ambitious for their old-time catches, 
we note with pleasure it is becoming unpopular 
to bring in more trout or salmon than is needed 
for table use ; and instead of reckoning their sport 
by the number they kill, they find pleasure in 
returning all uninjured and not needed fish alive 
to the water, to be caught, if not by them, by 
some brother angler. Although we do not expect 
or ask this, we very much appreciate it, and are 
more than much obliged to the angler who is 
generous enough to assist in maintaining our 
fish supply in this way. This practice is strongly 
encouraged by our best guides, who for some 
years past have realized the importance of keep- 
ing up the supply of trout and salmon. 

Late years a great deal of attention has been 
given to artificial propagation, and stocking the 
waters from other hatcheries, and the government 
has also been very generous in remembering us 
with trout and salmon fry, through the efforts of 



178 LAKE AND FOREST 

our star fly-fisherman, Senator Frye, who has the 
record of a trout of ten pounds and a fraction 
over, actually taken on an artificial fly and a light 
rod, by fair casting, the only way that he enjoys 
or indulges in fishing ; for if the trout or salmon 
does not care to rise and take the fly on the sur- 
face, the senator does not try to bribe him with 
anything different. Although there are not so 
many nine and ten pounders taken as a few years 
ago, the smaller trout seem to be as plenty as 
ever, and the salmon surely are increasing very 
rapidly. 

It used to be my custom to make a still-hunting 
trip for deer, late in the fall, when enough snow 
had fallen to make good tracking, which I usually 
did alone ; and it was after one of these trips, after 
dark one night, early in December, that I was 
returning to my camp at Bemis, with two good 
bucks in my boat. I had left the camp alone 
when I went away about a week before, but a 
week of camping out in a bough lean-to at that 
time of year caused me to enjoy the anticipation 
of getting back to my comfortable Camp Bemis 
very much ; and I was planning on the good fires 
that I would soon have going in the old "ram 



VARIOUS TRIPS 179 

down " and cook stove, and the good supper that 
would soon follow, of broiled venison steak, fried 
deer's liver and bacon, fried potatoes, hot biscuit, 
and a nice cup of coffee ; of the pleasant evening 
reading by a warm stove, and the luxury of a 
lamp ; and later of the warm, comfortable blankets 
to take my clothes off and crawl into, and sleep 
all night without having to turn out two or three 
times to pile logs on the fire ; for, although I 
enjoyed the camping out in a lean-to by an open 
fire, the thoughts of the comforts of the home 
camp were very pleasant, and were occupying my 
mind, as well as the idea that I was likely to strike 
ice at any minute, which had been prompting 
me all along to pull as stiff an oar as I was 
capable of. 

The wind had died away, leaving the water 
calm and motionless, and I well knew that the 
temperature was falling very rapidly, and the 
frosty air would soon seal the water with a cover- 
ing of ice, making it a prisoner until the warm 
spring sun came to its rescue. I had guessed 
right about the ice, for, when two miles out from 
Bemis, I began to strike thin ice, and I soon had 
to drag my deer into the stern of the boat, so as to 



l80 LAKE AND FOREST 

bring the bow above the ice, to prevent it being 
cut, and to paddle, standing up in the stern. I 
landed in front of the camp, drew the boat 
out on the shore, and, taking my pack and rifle, 
started for the camp I lived in in the winter, 
which was the guide's camp, and lay back of my 
line of camps, and reached by a path between 
them. 

As I passed one of the summer cabins, I was 
surprised to hear fire crackling inside ; but, on 
looking at the windows, could see no ray of light, 
which struck me as very peculiar, as when the 
camps were closed in the fall the curtains were 
taken down. I went to the front of the camp 
and tried the door, and found it fastened on 
the inside. After repeated requests to open the 
door, there was a slight commotion and it was 
unfastened, and besides the man who opened the 
door, I saw another lying on the floor with his 
feet on the side of the fireplace, in which a good 
fire was burning. 

In answer to my inquiry as to how they came 
there, they said they were strangers in these 
parts, and had got lost on the lake that after- 
noon ; and seeing the camps here, and finding 



VARIOUS TRIPS l8l 

them unfastened, they had come in and built a 
fire. I told them that was all right, and in answer 
to my inquiry if they had had any supper, they 
said they had not; so I told them I would soon 
have the camp where I lived warmed up, and 
would have some supper ready, and for them 
to come over there. As I left the camp, I saw 
the reason why I had not seen the Hght from 
the fire from the outside. They had taken the 
oilcloths from the tables and hung them up, 
shutting off all light from the front windows. 

I went to my living camp, lighted my lamps, 
and built fires in my cook stove and " ram down," 
and went out to pilot the men to it with a lantern. 
I was surprised to find them with pack and rifle 
in hand, preparing to take their departure, which 
they explained to me, saying that they thought 
they had better be going. Thinking that they 
realized that the lake was freezing over, I told 
them that if they were going to get away with a 
boat, of course it would be necessary for them to 
go that night, but urged them to remain to sup- 
per. They thanked me, but said they would not 
stop, and I went back to the camp. 

It came to me all of a sudden that there was 



1 82 LAKE AND FOREST 

some good reason for so hurried a departure, and, 
seizing my lantern, I hurried to the main house, 
where my summer outfit was stored, and saw at a 
glance the cause of so sudden a leavetaking, for 
they had broken the lock on the outside door, 
which let them into a small room, used in the sum- 
mer as a laundry, but in which there was little of 
value left. The door from this leading into the 
main house, however, was not broken open, and 
I knew they had not succeeded in getting a 
great deal ; but I ran to the shore after my visitors, 
but could only hear them threshing the ice with 
their oars, quite a distance out in the lake, and 
knowing that it was of no use to follow them then, 
I returned to camp to get supper in no very pleas- 
ant frame of mind. 

As soon as the ice froze hard enough to hold me, 
which was two days later, I put on my skates, and 
with a long, dry pole in my hand as a safeguard in 
case I should strike thin places or cracks in the 
ice, started for The Birches, to see if they had hon- 
ored that place with a visit. As I neared it, I was 
very sure they had, as I saw oilcloth at the cook 
camp windows, the same as had been done at 
Bemis. After getting inside, I found they had but 



VARIOUS TRIPS 183 

recently taken their departure ; but they had not 
gone away until they had stocked up on my sup- 
plies, which they had made no effort to conceal. 
I only took a hurried look around to ascertain as 
nearly as possible what they had taken, which 
seemed to be mostly supplies, and among other 
things a quart glass pickle jar with a large mouth, 
which I used as a molasses pitcher, and in which 
I had put a wooden plug, which I had whittled 
out one evening, when I had a whittling spell on ; 
and I knew if they did not throw away the stop- 
per, I would have something to prove the story of 
their visit. 

I had no trouble in finding their track on the 
snow and following it to the lake, and had no 
trouble to again find it on the thin, glare ice, as 
they had hauled something which scratched. I 
soon had my skates on and was on my way to 
Birch Point, as the scratches led in that direction ; 
and as I saw that the upper end of the lake was 
clear of ice, I knew they would be obliged to go 
ashore there. I very soon found their track on 
the shore, and very near the lake I also found 
what had done the scratching. A light fish car 
which we had made for trolUng behind a boat had 



1 84 LAKE AND FOREST 

been used as a sled to haul their load across the 
lake, but on getting into the woods they were 
obliged to leave that and make their load up into 
packs. In doing this, they had scattered beans, 
dried apples, and prunes, which I knew must have 
come from my camp. 

I followed the tracks along the shore for about 
three miles, when they went on to the ice again, 
near Stony Batter. Here I could not follow the 
tracks, and I again put on my skates and struck 
across to the Mooselookmeguntic House to inquire 
if anything had been seen of two men. This was 
in the days when Crosby and Twombley ran the 
Mooselookmeguntic House. Walter Twombley 
had just skated down Cupsuptic Lake, and had 
seen two men going along, following up the west 
shore, toward the head of the lake, carrying a pole 
on their shoulders, while between them, and at- 
tached to the pole, they seemed to have a heavy 
load. He was considerably interested, as two 
men, answering their description, had come there 
a few days before and hired a boat, and he at 
once offered to go with me as soon as we could 
get our supper. 

As Walter had just skated down the lake, he 



VARIOUS TRIPS 185 

took his track with a lantern, and I followed along 
with the pole a few yards behind. The ice was 
thin and cracked up considerably, but we found no 
difficulty until we got out on to the Cupsuptic, 
above Senator Frye's camp, when all of a sudden, 
Walter broke through. Pitching forward, he 
scrambled out on the ice getting wet only a 
little, but I was not so fortunate, as I had time 
to turn but slightly, and got full benefit of the ice 
he had broken. I went in about all over, but 
was soon out again, with no damage done more 
than a good wetting, and was fortunate enough to 
have both skates on, while Walter had had the 
misfortune to lose one of his. 

The lantern was uninjured and still going, and 
as Walter would have to go slowly on account of 
the loss of his skate, it was decided he would 
keep the lantern, while I would skate on ahead 
to Billy Soule's, for the night was cold, and I was 
in no condition to go slow. I struck out in the 
darkness, one end of the pole in my hand, sliding 
the other end ahead of me to find the cracks, 
which I very often did, when I would catch the 
pole by the middle and crawl along regardless of 
water, till I was safely over the crack ; then I 



1 86 LAKE AND FOREST 

would rise and go on till I struck another one, 
when I would go through the same thing, often 
lying flat on my stomach. Sometimes I would 
be about all under water, but by feeHng the pole 
ahead of me I would be sure that there was ice 
beyond. I wasn't sorry when I struck Pleasant 
Island and found myself before Billy's pleasant 
open fire, and was soon throwing my wet clothes 
right and left ; and Billy was not long in putting 
his whole wardrobe at my disposal. All who 
know Billy Soule and his Pleasant Island camps 
know that it is a good place to reach, either wet 
or dry, for there's nothing about camp too good 
for his friends ; and if a man were in need 
of a shirt, and Billy had the only one on that was 
on the island, he'd pull it off and insist that his 
friend should take it. 

I was soon arrayed from head to foot in Billy's 
clothes, after giving myself a good rubbing with 
a dry towel ; and after a while Walter came, and 
he and I were again on the way in search of the 
much-wanted men, whom Billy had seen just be- 
fore dark, near the head of the lake, and thought 
we should find in one of the small unoccupied 
camps on the west shore, so we went in that 
direction. 



VARIOUS TRIPS 187 

The first camp we came to, we smelled camp 
smoke, and saw tracks. The door being fastened, 
we rattled it and demanded an entrance, and re- 
peated this until finally the door was opened, the 
man opening it quickly rejoining his companion in 
the berth. We held the lantern to their faces, 
and I saw that they were the same men I had 
seen at Camp Bemis, which they stoutly denied, 
saying they had never seen me before. I then 
inquired about a camp on an island, and they said 
they had not been there and did not know any- 
thing about it, although they admitted they were 
the men who had got the boat at Haines Land- 
ing; but said they had been camping in the 
woods ever since, and had left the boat, as the 
lake had frozen and they could not get it away. 
After finding there was no satisfaction to be had 
in questioning them, we began to look the camp 
over, and found on the table, on which were a 
few eatables, the glass pickle jar with the wooden 
stopper I had whittled out at The Birches ; and 
although we hunted the camp over thoroughly 
and the berths under the men, that was all we 
could find that I could swear belonged to me. 

I took the jar, turning the molasses out in a 



1 88 LAKE AND FOREST 

bowl, telling them I could prove the jar was mine, 
that men had seen me whittle the stopper out at 
The Birches, and that I was going to Rangeley, 
to get a warrant and an officer. Then Walter and 
I took our departure and went down on to the 
ice, giving them time to think over the situation, 
and to plan on what we thought was the best 
course to pursue. We decided that it was best 
to try to settle with them, then and there. We 
went back into the camp and told them that if 
they would own up to what they had taken and 
bring out what they had, we would settle with 
them. But they still protested their innocence, 
which we told them would do them no good, as we 
were there to settle or push them by law to the 
utmost, and the best thing for them to do was to 
own it up and settle, man fashion. 

Upon this, one of them said, " What d'ye 
say. Jack } " Jack replied, " Do as ye like," 
when he got up and fished out an axe that I 
at once recognized as mine, from overhead under 
the splits. Then, unlocking a chest, he took out 
some of the supplies he had taken, and was 
about to shut the cover down, when we inter- 
fered, as we were sure there was more in the 



VARIOUS TRIPS 189 

chest, knowing he had not got to the bottom, as 
there was straw in it. Pulling the straw out, 
we found canned goods and other supplies they 
had taken from my camp. 

After getting them all out in a pile, and on 
their repeated assertions that that was all they 
had that belonged to me, we agreed to settle for 
fifty dollars; but they declared they had no 
money, when, seeing the outfit they had of new 
shooting-irons, we agreed to take those. I took 
two new .38 revolvers, that at that time were 
worth about eighteen dollars apiece, and Walter 
got a new Winchester rifle and a dirk knife. 
With these in our possession we left them, and 
went back to Billy's, where we spent the 
night, a good part of it being devoted to the 
nice lunch Billy had prepared for us, and pleas- 
ant chats over old times, for we had all been 
on more or less hunts together. One in par- 
ticular, which Billy and I had taken some years 
before to Parmachenee Lake, had made impres- 
sion enough on both our minds not to be easily 
forgotten. 

We had taken a morning start from a camp 
not far from Pleasant Island. It was just after 



IQO LAKE AND FOREST 

freezing-up time in the fall, or the first of the 
winter, and about a foot of light snow was on 
the ground. We both had quite heavy packs, 
and rifles, and we found the travelling hard, both 
on the river and in the woods. Darkness over- 
took us long before we reached the lake, and 
we were obliged to strike through Moose Brook 
swamp by a compass course, lighting matches oc- 
casionally to see which way the needle pointed. 
When we reached the lake we found the ice 
very thin, but we ventured on, keeping near the 
shore, and took our chances of a ducking. Soon 
we got it, both going in at the same time to our 
middles in the ice-cold water. This sent us into 
the woods again for a short distance, but the 
travelling was so hard there — on account of 
windfalls, underbrush, and darkness — that we 
soon gave the ice another try. Another cooling 
for one of us soon followed, and we were obliged 
to take to the woods again. 

After a while we got opposite Camp Caribou, 
which is on an island, and was about half a mile 
from the point where we were. We could see 
the light in the camp windows shining brightly, 
and though it looked near, it seemed far away. 



VARIOUS TRIPS 191 

A shot from our rifles brought an answering one 
from the camp, then with a "Halloo, can you 
get to us with a boat?" we waited breathlessly 
for an answer. Soon the cheering (?) response 
came, " No ; you will have to go around." 

This meant another two miles of groping our 
way in darkness over blown-down trees and un- 
derbrush to a point within a few rods of the 
island where the camp stood. Another halloo 
from the camp interrupted Billy in a little reci- 
tation that he never learned from his Sunday- 
school book. We listened. '' Come around on to 
Long Point, and we will break across to you 
with a boat," came from the darkness. On we 
went, some of the time on the ice, then into the 
water, then into the woods. 

Long Point was at last reached, and our old 
friend, John Danforth, was there to grasp us by 
the hands, take our packs and load them into 
the boat, and paddle us to camp. The first 
thing to be done, after getting into camp, was 
to be thawed out. Our legs were almost un- 
manageable on account of the weight of ice on 
them, caused by wetting them so often and then 
wallowing in the snow. John stood us up before 



192 LAKE AND FOREST 

the fire and went for us with a club, knocking 
the ice off in large pieces. When this was done 
Billy found himself minus one stocking leg, and 
it has always been a mystery to him where he 
lost it. He claims that a bed never felt better 
to him than it did that night ; and, if my memory 
serves me right, I didn't find any fault with the 
way my bed was made. 

This, and some of our other trips in which there 
was not so much hardship, wound up our even- 
ing's reminiscences, when we realized that, if we 
were to do any sleeping, we must be about it, and 
accordingly turned in in one of Billy's comfort- 
able beds. In the morning, Billy having furnished 
Walter with a pair of skates, we had good skat- 
ing back to Haines Landing, where I bade Walter 
good-by, and skated on to Bemis, stopping at 
The Birches long enough to put things in order 
and fasten up the camps. 

On the way down to Bemis, skating over the 
fine ice, and knowing that I had come out very 
nearly square with the rascals I had offered to 
befriend at Bemis, put me in a very pleasant 
frame of mind ; and the conversation of the night 
before about the Parmachenee trip carried me 



VARIOUS TRIPS 193 

back to some of the enjoyable trips I had made 
with my friend Danforth in that vicinity, some 
of them being of hardship, mixed with pleasure, 
but all very pleasant to look back upon.' 

At times when hunting on the head waters of 
the Magalloway, above Parmachenee, we would 
make long snow-shoe trips, often going through 
to the Canadian settlements to get a pack load 
of provisions, and to get acquainted with some 
human beings besides ourselves. The settlers 
along the Canadian border were Canadian French, 
and generally but few of them could speak a 
word of English. They lived upon what they 
could raise, and what they could get out of the 
woods, but were the happiest race of people 
imaginable. There was hardly an evening that 
they would not get together in one of the small 
log houses, where, with the help of a fiddle or 
two, they would have a very merry time. 

On one of our trips John and I spent the night 
in one of these small houses, and as usual all the 
young people from the neighboring shanties came 
in. A fiddle not being available, they decided 
to play games, which a young man who could 
speak a little EngHsh said they would be very 



194 LAKE AND FOREST 

glad to have us join. On our asking what the 
game would be he said, after many motions and 
considerable French talk among the party, 
" Roon after leetle animal ; don't know what 
you call heem in EngUsh, but he go joomp 1 
joomp ! joomp ! " making us understand more by 
his motions than by his talk. 

" Rabbit," we suggested. 

" Oui, oui, roon after the rabbeet," and we ex- 
pressed ourselves as being very glad to join the 
game. 

Accordingly the stools were moved outdoors, 
and we all stood in a circle around the room. A 
stocking, with a longer leg than is usually worn 
by the men, was produced, and a fair-sized potato 
was placed in the toe of it, secured in place by a 
knot, tied firmly above it; and while our French 
friend was explaining to me the game, something 
struck me over the head, which I thought might be 
a beam from the loft above, and all began to make 
motions around the circle, and call " Roon ! Roon ! " 

I lit out, but not before I got another reminder 
that there wasn't any mistake about my being 
the rabbit, and my turn had come to jump. I 
made as good time around the circle as possible, 



VARIOUS TRIPS 195 

for I don't remember of ever being more in a 
hurry than I was in making that circle, and get- 
ting back into the place I had left, and not escap- 
ing a few more good welts on the way. Then I 
was given the stocking by the roguish-looking 
girl, who seemed to enjoy the pelting she had 
given me as well as the rest of the crowd, and 
no one was more pleased than my friend John, 
who was nearly doubled up in his merriment. 

I was told by the French boy to take the stock- 
ing and hit the girl I liked best ; so I took it and 
walked around the circle, looking them over, and 
it wasn't a question of the one I Hked best, but a 
"racer built" one I was looking for; for I well 
knew John would be the next victim, and when I 
had spotted the right one, as I thought, I signified 
my selection by striking the open air where she 
stood when I made the motion to strike. I gave 
chase, and though I never made better time in 
running down a deer, I hardly got a fair blow, but 
her running gear was perfectly satisfactory. 

I gave her the stocking and stepped into the 
place she stepped out of, and I was not disap- 
pointed in thinking who would be the next victim, 
for John soon got a crack over the head that sent 



196 LAKE AND FOREST 

him spinning around the circle for all he was 
worth. The cracks came thick and fast, and in 
his hurry he failed to make the turn, and took a 
header over the cradle in which the baby was 
sleeping, the good mother of the house sitting in 
the corner behind it. As the baby went sprawl- 
ing on the floor, she made a grab to catch it, and 
got a full blow, calculated for John, between the 
shoulders, which caused her to forget the baby 
and take a hand in the game. She seized the 
stocking and gave the saucy miss a good crack 
that sent her flying, and then " mother " sailed in 
for a grand right and left, swinging the stocking 
with telling effect at anything within reach. It 
was really wonderful what a stiff game " mother " 
could play. 

John and I took refuge under the ladder that 
went up loft, but dodged out long enough to right 
the cradle and put it in the corner, and place 
young Canada in it, who was *' giving tongue" 
as only a well-scared, buckwheat-fed, young 
" Canuck " can. 

The game didn't last long, and would have been 
shorter if the door had been larger, as they taxed 
it to its utmost in the rough-and-tumble scramble to 



VARIOUS TRIPS 197 

get out of reach of the powerful arm of "mother." 
John and I still clung to our place of refuge under 
the ladder, not knowing whether we were to play 
the part of the rabbit any more or not; but our 
minds were soon at rest, for as soon as she had 
cleared the house she returned, bringing a couple 
of stools, and made motions for us to be seated, 
which we did, sitting very straight, and on our 
best behavior, very much appreciating the agility 
of "mother" in championing our cause. John ran 
his fingers lightly through his hair, smiling a sort 
of sickly smile as he did so, remarking that he 
should play no more French games until he 
understood more French. 

Shortly some of the young people began to 
venture back with the stools, and we were soon 
all seated around the room, looking at each other, 
and being very quiet. A fiddle was brought from 
one of the neighbor's, and the rest of the evening 
was spent very enjoyably in something not quite 
so hard on the head as "chase the rabbit." 

John and I spent a vastly comfortable night on 
a bearskin spread on the floor under the ladder, 
and we were a little particular how we laid our 
heads on our coats, which we used for "heading." 



CHAPTER XV 

CAMP LIFE AS IT WAS 

EARLY in the fall, after my summer guests 
had gone away, I usually let my cook and 
most of my summer crew go, keeping two 
or three good fellows to assist me in what boating 
there was to do, and in the work about the camps, 
repairing them or building new for the following 
year. But as the fall advanced and winter made 
its appearance, the steamboat would be pulled 
from the water and the camp jobs abandoned 
until the following spring ; and we would grind 
our axes and turn our attention to the next 
season's woodpile, which would usually take until 
well into February, with the exception of a break 
of a week or ten days taken to fill the ice-houses. 
What good times we used to have and with 
what pleasure I can look back to the compan- 
ionship of those good fellows, both in our days 
of work and evenings of comfort in that old 

19S 




The Kuins of Our Old Hunting Camp 



John Danforth and Two of his Guides at Camp Parmachenee 
ON CupsuPTic Kiver 



CAMP LIFE AS IT WAS 199 

log camp ; for they were men who took an inter- 
est in their work, and tried hard to accompUsh 
something besides getting in their day. And our 
working hours were not from eight to five, or 
from sun to sun, but from the time that dayHght 
would allow us to strike the first blow in the 
morning, until darkness shut us off at night. 
We would then quit work and go to camp to- 
gether, and while one would attend to "hotting" 
the stove, which would be already warm, and 
full of coals from being filled with large wood 
and left with closed draughts from the meal 
before, another, who might be called the " head 
cook," would wash his hands and quickly place 
over the fire eatables that had been prepared 
beforehand. Often this was broiled beefsteak, fried 
potatoes or meat hash, and biscuit, with the top 
and bottom crust wet, and placed in a baker sheet 
in the oven, covered with another baker sheet, 
to hold the moisture and keep them from drying, 
which would make them as fresh, and to my 
mind better than when first baked. The indis- 
pensable teapot would be steaming by the time 
the other things were ready, and usually, in 
less than half an hour from the time we came 



200 LAKE AND FOREST 

to camp, supper would be ready, the night wood 
and water in, the camp swept out ; for each man 
took his part to do, and all worked together to 
help in getting the work along. 

One of the staple articles of camp fare was a 
pot of beans, although we had graduated from 
a diet of beans twenty-one times a week; for 
there is nothing that wears better, or will stand 
by a hard-working man any better, than good, 
old-fashioned baked beans, with plenty of pork, 
a liberal supply of molasses, and eight or ten 
hours of a fairly hot oven or bean hole. The 
meat stew is also one of the convenient dishes, 
if one is fortunate enough to have the meat and 
potatoes, and all the meat and bones that would 
otherwise have to be thrown away can be used 
to good advantage, as the more bones there are 
for it, the better the stew. By keeping the 
kettle on the back of the stove, it is always 
ready, and good, either morning, noon, or night, 
and one of its advantages is that the more times 
it is warmed up the better it is. 

We used to keep a large kettle of stew on the 
back of the stove the most of the time, which 
would usually last us three or four days a week. 



CAMP LIFE AS IT WAS 201 

I was particular to keep the kettle covered up, 
especially after Bill Russell told the story at 
the table one night, of working in a crew at one 
time where the most they had to eat was stew. 
One day, after making a fresh, full kettle, the 
cook missed his fur cap, for which he continually 
mourned, as he had worn it for years, hardly 
ever having it off his head night or day. When 
the stew was nearly gone, he located it, snuggled 
down in the bottom of the kettle. 

After supper was the time to wash the dishes 
for the day, for at breakfast and dinner we would 
turn our plates over, not being so " nasty par- 
ticular" as to wash them, only after supper; and 
we had often heard it said that it was " a dirty 
pig that had to have his trough washed out after 
every meal." I have heard of a camp where 
the rule was that the dishes should not be washed 
as long as they could remember what was eaten 
in them last, but we did a little better than that. 

It was not in our camp that the story origi- 
nated that I have been told, of a crew that 
changed cooks every time one of them found 
fault with the cooking, the rule being that the 
man who found fault should cook until some one 



202 LAKE AND FOREST 

else complained that the grub was not what it 
should be. One fellow, thinking that he was 
getting more than his share of the cooking, 
which he did not enjoy, and had tried in vain 
to make some one growl, added a cupful of salt 
to the two quarts of flour for the breakfast bis- 
cuit. When the first man got a liberal piece in 
his mouth, he brought his fist down on the 
table with a whack, saying, as he did so, "This 
biscuit is all-fired salt," and then, remembering 
the penalty for fault-finding, added in the same 
breath, "but / like it." 

While the table was being cleared and the 
dishes washed, one of us usually baked a sheet 
of gingerbread, or mixed up some doughnuts, one 
of the others lending a hand in the frying when 
they were ready; and before it was anyways 
late in the evening we would have the work 
finished and sit down to a social chat around 
the stove, or a game of cards, or perhaps I 
would read aloud to them from some book we 
would all find interesting. We did not know 
much about daily papers, it often being two or 
three weeks that we would be obliged to go 
without mail, so that the books that were given 



CAMP LIFE AS IT WAS 203 

me by my good city friends in the summer 
used to be read. One fall and winter I had a 
man who was one of the best fellows, ingenious 
and capable in his work, and although he could 
not read a line, he was the most interested one 
of them all when reading was going on. Long 
after I had read myself and the others sleepy, 
and they had turned in for the night, I used to 
sit up and read to him ; and among other things 
that he promised to do for the favor, was to 
keep me awake; for although I would be much 
interested in ''Uncle Tom," or some of the 
other books that I read, my voice would thicken, 
and my eyes begin to close, in spite of my try- 
ing hard to keep awake. It was then that he 
would get in some of his work, by rapping my 
shins with a broomstick which he kept by him ; 
and with his cheery, " Come back here on to 
your job," or some other comical expression, I 
would brace up and go on till he had to wield 
the broomstick again. 

My last work before retiring was to fill the 
old *'ram down" full of green wood, and bank 
the front draught well with ashes, and the first 
thing in the morning to dig the ashes away, 



204 LAKE AND FOREST 

when the " ram down " would go to puffing like 
a steam-engine, being half full of large live 
coals and brands, a few shovels of which, put 
into the cook stove, with a little dry wood, would 
soon have it ready for business, with boiling 
water and a hot oven. 

Rockefeller little realizes the debt of gratitude 
that he owes the cooks of to-day and the fire- 
builders of the country, for they have helped to 
swell his millions to an unrealized extent ; and 
as his wealth and output of oil have increased, 
the art of banking a fire and of whittling shav- 
ings has been lost, and the average man who 
has a fire to build will, in order to get to the 
kerosene barrel, wade ankle deep through birch 
bark and splinters that would once have glad- 
dened his heart. 

While the '' ram down " was warming the 
camp, the cook stove would help out in this 
direction, and turn out potatoes and biscuit 
enough for the three meals of the day. 

Our sleeping quarters were upstairs, and as 
the chamber was one room and open to the 
roof, it was a little airy some of the nights when 
the mercury got well down in the twenties. As 



CAMP LIFE AS IT WAS 205 

the camp stood not far from the shore, 
where the northwest wind had an eight-mile 
rake over the lake, it would rock quite percep- 
tibly when some of the Bemis blasts struck it; 
and the frosty air would carry the powdered 
snow with it through the shingles of the roof, 
as the roof boards were laid a little way apart 
to save lumber, and although it was water-tight, 
it was not wind-tight. Many a night, when the 
camp was unusually frisky, I have slept and 
dreamed that I was on the lake in my boat, 
and that there was a heavy sea running, and the 
spray was flying, as the powdered snow would be 
sifted into my face. 

After one of these nights it was my morning 
job, as soon as I got the fires going, and before 
the heat got to the chamber, to take the outside 
blankets very carefully from the beds, shake 
the snow from them, and return them to the 
beds, and sweep up the snow on the floor, some- 
times getting several bushels of it in one morn- 
ing ; but this was not a common occurrence, and 
only happened in the coldest of weather and 
hardest of winds. I used to work around very 
quietly so as not to waken the men, as some of 



206 LAKE AND FOREST 

them might be thin-skinned, and abuse the dear 
old camp by saying some very uncompHmentary 
things about it; and I remember that one morn- 
ing, when I did not look sharp enough in getting 
the snow from the different articles, when I 
called '' Turn out," a man who had not been 
with us long jumped into his trousers, that had 
been left beside his bed in an exposed position. 
This caused him to come downstairs at a lively 
gait and make for the " ram down," where he 
whirled around and backed up unusually close 
to it, swearing that he ''never would go to sleep 

in that d d hole again " without rolling his 

trousers up and putting them under his bed, 
even if it was in the middle of July. 

Good stories were sometimes told by the men of 
their guiding experiences in the summer, and the 
following is one, perhaps, that will bear repeating. 
Guides generally know their place, and are not 
over inquisitive as to the affairs of their city 
patrons ; but some guides, like all other men, may 
not be perfect in all ways. This story was told 
one evening while we were enjoying an after sup- 
per chat around the fire. 

** Last summer, when I was camping up at White 



CAMP LIFE AS IT WAS 207 

Cap Pond with a party, Pete came in to sack in 
some grub to us from the settlement, and while I 
was getting supper, he got himself straightened 
out with his back to a tree, and his old pipe lit, 
and struck a sociable streak, and went to entertain- 
ing my man. 

" Says Pete, * Where do you come from ? ' 

** ' New York,' says my man. 

" ' Is that so } ' says Pete. * Well, I should think 
you would find it mighty lonesome away off there 
in New York.' 

" ' Oh, not so very,' says my man. * There is 
quite a lot going on in that small town.* 

" * What do you find to amuse yourself in ? ' says 
Pete. 

" * Well,' says my man, * for one thing there is 
the Stock Exchange, that sometimes is quite ex- 
citing.' 

" 'Oh, I have heard of that place,' says Pete, 
*and it was one of them fellers that belongs to 
that, that come down here fishin' ; and he had one 
o' them things with him that takes picters, and he 
was shootin' everything with it. He fired it at one 
of Old Harding's pet Jersey heifers, and when he 
got the picter out of it, he marked it '' A Famous 



208 LAKE AND FOREST 

Maine Durham Bull," and some one showed it to 
old Harding, and told him what it was, and how 
one o' them New York Stock Exchange men took 
it ; and the old man was mad I can tell you, and he 
said if one o' them fellers ever insulted one of his 
good, nice, respectable heifers like that again, he 
would go down to New York and knock the stuff- 
ing out'n that whole Stock Exchange, and show 
them fellers that before they went to exchanging 
any of his stock into picters, that they better have 
brains enough to know a heifer from a bull/ 

•* My man he laughed, and Pete he thought he 
was a natural entertainer upon that, and he braced 
up in great style and started in again. * Do you 
do much in stock ? ' says he. 

" * Oh, not so very much,' says my man, * I buy 
and sell a little occasionally.' 

" * How are yer New York heifers, a putty 
smooth article ? ' says Pete. 

" * Well, fairly so,' says my man. 

" ' Come in medium kind of early } ' says Pete. 

"'Well, now,' says my man, 'that's just what 
they don't do.' 

"'Well,' says Pete, 'you ought to look after 
that. Where do you pasture them .? ' 



CAMP LIFE AS IT WAS 209 

" * Some of them on The Bowery,' says my 
man. 

" * Pretty rocky on The Bowery, ain't it ? ' says 
Pete. 

" * Well, there are people who find it so,' says 
my man. 

** * Sheep and lambs would do well there,' says 
Pete ; ' for I know that it ain't any more rocky than 
my back lot, and I turned that out to sheep and 
lambs, but I used ter tell about havin' their noses 
steel-p'inted before they could get a living.' 

" Pete lit his pipe and started in on another 
tack. ' Ain't there some kind of a game they play 
on that Stock Exchange } ' 

" ' Don't know what you mean,' says my man. 

"'Well,' says Pete, *I don't understand it, but 
when I was with the Spiller party last summer I 
heard one o' the wimmen say, " Mr. Sargent, when 
you were a member of the Stock Exchange, was 
you a bull, or was you a bear.? " **I was neither," 
says he, " I was a jackass," and I thought probably 
there was some game like that they played.' 

" ' Well,' says my man, * they do play a pretty 
stiff game sometimes, and some one represents all 
of those animals.' 



2IO LAKE AND FOREST 

"'Well/ says Pete, 'I guess they're better at 
that than looking after stock, for I don't believe 
that many of those fellers know enough about 
stock to water it' " 



CHAPTER XVI 

CONCLUSION 

THE OLD CANOE 

Where the rocks are gray and the shore is steep, 
And the waters below look dark and deep ; 
Where the rugged pine in its lonely pride 
Leans gloomily o'er the murky tide ; 
Where the reeds and rushes are tall and rank, 
And the weeds are thick on the winding bank. 
Where the shadow is heavy the whole day through, 
Lies at its moorings the old canoe. 

The useless paddles are idly dropped, 

Like a sea-bird's wings that the storm has lopped, 

And crossed on the railings, one o'er one. 

Like folded hands when the work is done ; 

While busily back and forth between 

The spider stretches his silvery screen, 

And the solemn owl, with his dull " too-hoc," 

Nestles down on the side of the old canoe. 

The stern, half sunk in the slimy wave. 
Rots slowly in its living grave, 
And the green moss creeps o'er its dull decay, 
Hiding the mouldering dust away, 

211 



212 LAKE AND FOREST 

Like the hand that plants o'er the tomb the flower, 
Or the ivy that mantles a fallen tower ; 
While many a blossom of liveliest hue 
Springs up o'er the stern of the old canoe. 

The currentless waters are dead and still, 
But the light winds play with the boat at will ; 
And lazily in and out again 
It floats the length of its rusty chain, 
Like the weary march of the hands of time, 
That meet and part at the noontide chime ; 
And the shore is kissed at each turn anew 
By the dripping bow of the old canoe. 

Oh, many a time with a careless hand 
I have pushed it away from the pebbly strand, 
And paddled down where the stream ran quick. 
Where the birds were wild and the storm was thick ! 
And laughed as I leaned o'er the rocking side, 
And looked below in the broken tide, 
To see that the faces and boats were two 
That were mirrored back from the old canoe. 

But now, as I lean o'er the crumbling side, 

And look below in the sluggish tide, 

The face that I see is graver grown. 

And the laugh that I hear has a sober tone, 

And the hands that lent to the light skiff wings 

Have grown familiar with sterner things ; 

But I love to think of the hours that flew. 

As I rocked where the whirls their wild spray threw. 

Ere the blossoms moved or the green gi^ass grew 

O'er the moulderins; stern of the old canoe. — Anon. 



CONCLUSION 



213 



AS my vacation days for the winter are 
nearly over, and the approach of spring 
again calls me to repairs on camps and 
boats, for the coming of the sportsmen, I must 
draw this story to a close, in which I trust my 
friends may find entertainment enough to cover 
the price paid for it. 

Although it outlines a life in which the work 
hours have often been long, it has been full of 
enjoyment, and I have in the last twenty-five 
years found many play days, which have been 
mostly in the winter ; for between the time when 
the wood was worked up, and the ice-houses 
filled for the following season, were six weeks or 
two months, when I found time in which to go 
where I pleased. I have had many an enjoy- 
able winter trip, several times to Florida, once 
to California, and the winter after the Spanish- 
American War, to Cuba ; and although these trips 
were for no other purpose than the pleasure 
and rest they gave, I have never taken one 
without realizing, sooner or later, that I was well 
paid in a business way, for "I met you in Cali- 
fornia," or "on the steamer on the way to Cuba," 
or *'in Florida, and told you that I would come 



214 LAKE AND FOREST 

to see you sometime," has often been the intro- 
duction of a newcomer to my camps. What I 
take to myself as quite a compliment is the fact 
that a pleasant-looking man once entered into 
conversation with me on a railway train in Florida, 
and soon asked if we did not meet seven years 
before on the steamer Osceola on the Ocklawaha 
River. We soon decided that he was right, and 
he drew from his inside pocket a pamphlet of 
Camp Bemis and The Birches that I had given 
him on that trip, with the remark, ** You see I 
did not forget you, and I have always intended 
to go up there and see you, but one thing or 
another has kept me going in. another direction; 
yet I have recommended your places to a great 
many friends of mine, some of whom have been 
there, and say that you gave them the best kind 
of a time." 

In closing this story I have to say, that if good 
Father Time would but turn back the wheels 
and make me a boy again, giving me the power 
of choice of condition and circumstances, I would 
endow myself with neither riches nor station. I 
would ask to be that same barefooted country 
farm boy again, with all my inborn love for 



CONCLUSION 215 

the woods and waters, for, led by that in explain- 
able passion, I struck the trail that has led me 
along a business life of pleasure, although at 
times it has been slow and hard climbing. But 
the work was of the kind that causes one to 
sleep well nights, awaken with a good taste in 
his mouth, and with a feeling that he could not 
be killed with a broadaxe. How many a pleas- 
ant Indian summer day I have enjoyed poling a 
canoe up some rapid stream, or paddling over 
those quiet woodsy lakes, or walking through the 
forest where the changing autumn foliage and 
playful brooks were pictures not to be forgotten ! 
No more so are those views that we have often 
taken, when with my friend Danforth I have 
climbed some tall tree on the highest peak of 
some of the national boundary mountains on a 
bright March day, when snow-shoeing was at 
its best. What views we would get as far as 
the eye could cover, into Canada in the north, 
or to the south into the States, where it is a 
panorama of mountains, lakes, and ponds, with 
the clearings of the Canadian border and State 
settlements in the distance ! How I enjoy going 
over those old scenes again, although the passion 



2l6 LAKE AND FOREST 

that I then possessed for the gun, trap, fishpole, 
and boat has to a large degree faded, and note 
with almost sadness that, with all the strides of the 
gun artists in the last twenty-five years, I cannot 
find an engraving which stands out like the pigeon 
that was engraved on the lock of the old single- 
barrelled muzzle-loader, as I saw it through the 
eyes of boyhood. They are pleasant to look 
back upon, and the remembrance of them is with 
me like the songs that my lumbermen friends 
used to sing, some of which I shall give you. 
Often in the pilot-house of my steamer on the 
late trip, when all alone with darkness, these 
songs have come back to me with all the fresh- 
ness of the hour when I heard them, more than 
thirty years ago, around the lumbermen's camp- 
fire, reclining on the roUed-up spreads, my hands 
behind my head, and a chew of gum in, and have 
turned my mind from the channel of the affairs 
of the day, which had, perhaps, been going on 
the order of sixes and sevens, and smoothed out 
any ruffles that might have accumulated. With 
these old songs I will say good-by for the 
present, hoping that it may be my fortune to be 
spared for many more seasons to welcome my 
friends to the delights of Lake and Forest. 




Miss Florence and John 



SOME OLD-TIME LUMBERMEN'S 

SONGS 



THE LUMBERMAN'S LIFE 

Oh, the lumberman's life is a wearisome one, 

Though some call it free from care. 
'Tis wielding the axe from the morning till night, 

In the middle of the forest so drear ; 
It is lying in the camp so bleak and cold. 

While the wintry winds do blow. 
And as soon as the morning star doth appear, 

To the wild woods we must go. 

Transported we are from the haunts of all men. 
From the banks of the "bonnishere" stream. 
Where the wolves and the owls, with their terrify- 
ing growls. 
Disturb us of our nightly dreams. 
Transported from the glass and the little laughing 
lass, 
All pleasures are left behind ; 
There is no one here to brush away the tear, 
When sorrow fills the troubled mind. 

219 



220 LAKE AND FOREST 

When springtime comes in, double trouble then 

begins, 
When the water is piercing cold. 
Dripping wet are our clothes, and our limbs are 

almost froze. 

And a pickpole we scarcely can hold. 

***** 

Every rapid that we run, we call it not but fun, 
For we are void of all foolish fear. 

Had we ale, wine, or beer, our spirits to cheer 

While in the woods so wild, 
Or a glass of any ** shone '* while in these woods 
alone, 
It would pass away a long exile. 
But lumbering I'll give o'er, and I'll anchor safe 
on shore, 
I will lead a sober, quiet life, 
Nevermore will I roam, but contented stay at 
home. 
With an ever true and faithful, loving wife. 



SOME OLD-TIME LUMBERMEN'S SONGS 221 



THE DYING SOLDIER 

The sun was sinking in the west, and shed its 

lingering ray, 
Through the branches of a forest, where a 

wounded soldier lay, 
'Neath the shade of a palmetto, 'neath a southern, 

sultry sky. 
Far away from loved New England, they had laid 

him down to die. 

A group had gathered 'round him, his comrades 

in the fight, 
And a tear coursed down each manly cheek, as he 

said his last good-night. 
One dear friend and companion was kneeling by 

his side, 
Trying to stay the life-blood, but, alas, in vain he 

tried. 

" Stand up nearer, comrades, nearer, Hsten to the 
words I say. 



222 LAKE AND FOREST 

There's a story I would tell you, ere my life-blood 

ebbs away. 
Far away in loved New England, in that old Pine 

Tree State, 
There is one who for my coming with a radiant 

heart will wait; 

"A fair young girl, my sister, my joy, my darling, 

and my pride. 
My loving care from childhood, for there's no one 

else beside. 
For my mother, she is sleeping, 'neath the old 

churchyard sod; 
Many, many years ago her spirit went to God. 

" And my father, he is sleeping 'neath the deep, 

dark blue sea. 
I've no brothers, I've no kindred, there is only 

Nell and me. 
When our country was in danger and called for 

volunteers. 
She threw her arms around my neck and, bursting 

into tears, 

" Saying : * Go, my darling brother, drive those 
traitors from our shore, 



SOME OLD-TIME LUMBERMEN'S SONGS 223 

Although I need thy presence, yet our country 

needs thee more. 
Oh, go, my darling brother, I will not bid you stay. 
But here in this old homestead I will wait you day 

by day.' 

" Now my comrades, I am dying, and I'll never see 

her more, 
Who will be to her a brother, shield her with a 

father's care ? " 
His comrades spoke together, like one voice it 

seemed to fall, 
" She shall be to us a sister, we'll protect her, one 

and all." 

A radiant smile of splendor his countenance over- 
spread. 

And one quick convulsive shudder, and the soldier 
boy was dead. 

By the waves of the Potomac, there they laid him 
down to rest, 

With his knapsack for his pillow, and his rifle 
'crost his breast. 



224 LAKE AND FOREST 



LITTLE STRONG BOW 

To Dartmouth's scientific hall, 

In olden times there came, 
A sprightly red boy from the west, 

And Strong Bow was his name, 
Much had he heard of the bookman's skill. 

The white man's pride and boast, 
And ardently he wished to get 

His honest mind engrossed. 

'Twas there he learned the white man's 
tongue. 

To read and write and speak. 
And soon by diligence was skilled 

In Latin lore and Greek. 
In modern arts and sciences 

With the white boys he kept pace. 
And few there were who ridiculed 

The color of his race. 



SOME OLD-TIME LUMBERMEN'S SONGS 225 

Except one proud New England youth, 

Who, overbearing, rude, 
Ofttimes on poor Strong Bow's peace, 

Would wantonly intrude. 
Yet when assailed in treatment base, 

The red boy simply said, 
" The time may yet arrive, when you 

Will need and ask my aid." 

The study years rolled swiftly 'round. 

On the rapid wheels of time, 
And Strong Bow to his nation went, 

In a distant western clime. 
The white boy with his parents lived, 

Hard by the Atlantic shore. 
And little he dreamed he e'er should meet 

His tawny classmate more. 

But when to sturdy manhood grown 

A captain he became. 
When the loud trump of war was blown, 

And Kendall was inflamed. 
The Britons proud arrayed the fight, 

Against the freemen's right, 
Engaged the red men on their side. 

And armed them for the fight. 



226 LAKE AND FOREST 

A battle fierce and long was fought 

Between the whites and red, 
And many a hero was laid low 

Upon a gory bed. 
The captain quickly to a tree, 

With thong and cord was bound, 
And pitchy fagots 'neath him placed. 

While firebrands flamed around. 

In death's announcing war dance joined 

The fiends who death songs sing ; 
When boldly stepped the chieftain forth 

To the centre of the ring. 
"And do you know me, sir ? " said he ; 

" View carefully this face." 
"I know you not," was the reply, 

" But humbly beg for grace." 

" You knew me once," the chieftain said, 

" And you shall know again, 
I am Strong Bow, on whom cruelly, 

You oft inflicted pain." 
** Strong Bow, brave chieftain, I confess, 

With shame, you tell the truth. 
But then you know it was the fault 

Of unreflecting youth." 



SOME OLD-TIME LUMBERMEN'S SONGS 22/ 

*' Captain, you know the Indians well ; 

They never can forget 
A favor or an injury, 

When friends or foes are met." 
" Strong Bow, I to my fate submit, 

But for my loving wife, 
My parents, and my children dear, 

I humbly beg for life." 

" Captain, although they can't forget, 

They freely can forgive." 
At liberty the captive set. 

Saying, '* Comrades, let him live. — 
And now, brave captain, you're released, 

A warning take from me. 
And never abuse an Indian boy. 

Wherever he may be." 



228 LAKE AND FOREST 



"JOHNNY BULL" 

It was once in Merry England, 

The home of Johnny Bull, 
When each Briton filled his glass, 

And he filled it brimming full ; 
And the toast that they drank. 

It was the health of Britons brave, 
Oh, the champion he was, 

Of the land and the wave. 

Then rose up Uncle Sam, 

And he looked across the main, 
Saying, " Is this your English bully, 

A-bellowing again ? 
O Johnny, don't you remember Yorktown, 

We caused you for to sigh ? 
And when next you talk of fighting, 

Johnny Bull, mind your eye." 

It was once in merry England, 
All in the bloom of spring. 



SOME OLD-TIME LUMBERMEN'S SONGS 229 

The bold English champion, 

Stood stripped, all in the ring. 
For to face our noble Heenan, 

The gallant son of Troy, 
And to try his English muscles 

On our brave Benicia Boy. 



Oh, there were two flags a-floating 

Proudly o'er the ring, 
The Britain was a lion 

All ready for to spring ; 
And the other was an eagle, 

And a mighty bird she was. 
For she held a bunch of thunderbolts, 

She held them in her claws. 



Oh, the coppers they were ** tos-ted " up, 

The melody begun, 
It was two to one on Sayres 

That the bets came rushing on. 
They fought like gallant heroes. 

Till Sayres got in a blow. 
And the red stream enticed 

From the Yankee's nose to flow. 



230 LAKE AND FOREST 

** First blood," cries Johnny Bull, 

And old England shouts with joy, 
And they cheer their English bully, 

While the brave Benicia Boy 
Seeing, the tiger rolls within him, 

And with lightning in his eye, 
Says, " Smile away, old England, 

But, Tommy, mind your eye." 

Then came the grandest round, boys, 

This world can never beat. 
The son of Uncle Sam, he rose 

The champion off his feet. 
And his followers they did smile. 

While he held him in the air. 
When from his grasp he threw him, 

Caused the Englishmen to stare. 

Now, Johnny, don't you remember. 

The battle of Bunker Hill, 
Likewise upon Lake Erie, 

We made you drink your fill ? 
But it's now you have got something, 

That'll cause you for to sigh. 
And when next you talk of fighting, 

Johnny Bull, mind your eye. 



JUL 2 1903 



I Ui I 




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